


Recuperare

by recuperare



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abusive Parents, Bad Parenting, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Post - Deathly Hallows, Psychological Torture, Recovery, References to Suicide, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-14
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-11 20:33:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 33,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/802927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recuperare/pseuds/recuperare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-war HP Fanfiction about Draco's life and recovery after the war and before the epilogue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“What do you remember feeling when this was happening?” she asked me.

The look of comfort that the room exuded contrasted heavily with the sterility of St. Mungo’s halls and corridors. I’d never been to a muggle hospital, but I’d heard them described in books and even saw a few on the sparse television programmes I managed to sneak at Blaise’s. Of course, I had pretended to be repelled and affronted by the very concept of a telly and professed a deadly allergy to anything muggle related, but like many things during that time, it was really just an act.

I rubbed the tension out of the top of my head, searching for the words to describe whatever emotion I’d tried to disconnect myself from at the time and currently. Almost all of the therapists I’d had at St. Mungo’s and one muggle one I saw for a few sessions before I realised how ridiculous the entire concept had been, had encouraged me to make connections between what I had been feeling and my body, as if I’d been living separately from it for awhile. At first, I found their constant questions about my feelings and my body annoying, but then I realised I’d been clenching my jaws and my fists during the entire session, and spent the hour afterwards rubbing the soreness out of them.

“I don’t know… I guess I felt terrified?”

“You guess?”

I sighed, hoping to give some sort of pause. Room to breathe and think. “It’s just… I felt terrified all of the time. For me to feel a little bit more terrified well,.. it didn’t necessarily merit much focus.”

“But it merits focus now, don’t you think?”

I hadn’t taken the suggestion of therapy with any form of grace, but it was understandable given the circumstances. I remembered that day like it was yesterday and it kept coming back to me, that moment when I’d crossed everyone. I walked across that stone field into that rat bastard’s arms, staring into my mother’s blue eyes. I hadn’t forgot it, and neither had anyone else. Every single one of my classmates hated me without question, except Blaise. The ones who had been on the rat bastard’s sides hated me for trying to redeem myself and everyone else hated me for my walk of shame, the choice I had made back then to side with my parents who didn’t have the good sense to choose the right side themselves. But what the hell was I supposed to do?

I had tried dying my hair so that I didn’t look so much like my father. When I arrived at Blaise’s one even with slicked back black hair, he tried to suppress his laughter. As much as that hurt, it wasn’t anywhere near the threatening glares and the empty looks I’d got from just about everyone else, even my old teachers. McGonnagall pursed her lips every time I saw her in Diagon Alley and Slughorn had stopped taking my owls a long time ago. It was only after my own owl came back with a deep scar across her face and an apologetic note from him about how his owls had recently started getting aggressive that I decided it wasn’t worth risking the life of the only other live beings who didn’t seem repulsed by my presence.

Still, I had tried to do something to redeem myself, or at least that was how it looked to everyone else. The reality of the situation was that I was only in it for revenge. I wanted to pay some heavy dues toward any witch or wizard that fancied themselves the new rat bastard in time. I’d paid a few of my old family friends some visits and showed them how I appreciated their hand in my upbringing. I played dumb when I had brought in a few people hexed beyond what would be reasonable for apprehending a suspect, but very few people questioned it. I think they were just as mad at some of the scum as they were at me and, despite how well I did on my Auror exams and how hard I’d worked to pass the difficult training, I felt like if there was a dangerous mission, they usually sent me. For some reason, it felt less like they trusted I had real expertise in apprehending wannabe Death Eaters and instead hoped the mission was so difficult I didn’t return.

There was this secret hope I had that becoming an Auror would finally and definitively prove to everyone that I really wasn’t trying to pick up where my father had left off, but I still had contact with my parents and everyone knew that. My parents were just as cold as ever, if not more. My mother spoke to me, but even the sweetest of compliments she gave came couched in broken glass and my father consistently refused any owls or visitations in Azkaban. I still sent them, partly because I hoped he would one day come to his bloody senses, but also because I hoped that my enthusiastic letters about how I’d sent another one of his old friends to join him made him feel even more miserable locked in that hell hole.

But the constant disapproval of damn near everyone had finally cracked me. Having only Blaise to trust, and not even fully, started taking it’s toll. I started feeling my heart race like I was ready to spring unknowingly on another coward while I was just sitting on my desk. Sleeping started becoming a task in and of itself when I’d wake up screaming from seeing that bastard’s face everywhere. People started whispering at work when I fell asleep at my desk, woke up screaming his name, flipping my wand around, and cursing the desks around me. Now, I was not only known as a traitor and a scum, but a scum slowly growing mad. My superiors did nothing but chastise me for falling asleep, so I didn’t bother telling them about my heart racing and my breath getting short, even when it started happening every day. Finally, when I was out on a call, trying to apprehend some piece of dirt that had kidnapped and tortured the half blood daughter of a very prominent figure in the Ministry, the bastard spun around on his heel to curse me and managed to land a hit. Normally, I wasn’t so slow on my feet, but I’d hesitated. His blonde hair swing through the air and for a moment I found myself in the Manor, five years old, seeing my father swinging around in almost the same way and feeling my stomach drop. My throat seized up and I dropped my wand. The bastard hexed me to the ground, made off with it, and ended up using it to kill the girl. 

Management wasn’t happy. Not only that I’d failed my mission but that I’d admitted to accidentally messing it up. They were probably even more angry that I only got hexed, instead of completely killed. The case made big news and my face had been plastered all over The Prophet. Rita Skeeter, who had been hounding me day in and day out to tell my tragic tale of misbegotten wishes of power and family struggles, had finally given up on a sympathetic portrayal and had coined the name “The Boy Who Failed” just for me. People started writing into the Ministry, asking them what exactly they were doing sending an ex and obviously crazed Death Eater out on priority cases and they started to sing my praises a little, but not before demanding I take some “sick leave” for half a year and see a specialist at St. Mungo’s for my mental maladies.

After a few therapists who could barely hide their contempt for me as I strolled into their office to tell them my darkest secrets, I’d tried a muggle therapist. I didn’t even get five minutes into the session before I realised that there was really no adequate way to explain my life to a muggle. Maybe I could have made up some lies but I knew too little about the muggle world to know what would be convincing. And the last thing I wanted was to end up in a muggle institution for talking about owls and wizards and wands. 

But Blaise had found this one for me. He’d been working on repairing some of the damage that the rat bastard caused within pure blood families. So many of us had gone along with it because of a few of our family members that felt insistent on pure blood supremacy. As it happens, very few of us actually supported the bastard, but once he’d snaked his way into our families and captured the minds and hearts of the people we loved, none of us felt we had a choice. And the amount of heavy silence that had weighed on us all made it impossible for most of us to talk to each other alone. We had no idea who would be watched, heard, and then killed. 

Petra Poliakoff had gone to Durmstrang and didn’t have any chance of actually hating me, seeing as how she was a few decades older. Being in a pureblood family, she had felt the same sort of heavy weight I had, except without the sense of urgency. She was the only therapist at St. Mungo’s who was pureblood and Blaise felt like she was probably the only one to understand. She’d been counselling some ex-Death Eaters and was the only therapist from St. Mungo’s that agreed to take visits to Azkaban, after she had heavily lobbied for the right to address the mental health needs of the prisoners there. Very few people felt sympathetic towards Azakban prisoners and even myself, with my father trapped there, had difficulties finding myself caring about the state of his mind. But Petra felt like the existence of Azakaban itself was a basic violation of human rights, even dropping the word “torture” to describe the state there. She lobbied the Ministry to get Azkaban reformed or shut down completely, but her pleas often fell on deaf ears. Still, Blaise had a point. If she could feel sympathetic for individuals in Azkaban, she had to be able to feel some sympathy towards me.

And Blaise was right. Petra understood a lot without me having to explicitly say so. She understood my difficulties in ways no one even tried to and since I started seeing her, the nightmares stopped. The Ministry refused to let me back into work until my six month “rest” was complete, despite both Petra and I’s pleas that I was ready to return and that work actually helped take my mind off of things and helped with the social isolation I felt, but, as you can imagine, the Ministry had little in the way of sympathy for my condition. Considering I felt lucky at least to have my job, I didn’t press the issue. And despite being in better mental health than I had been for weeks, Petra continued to press me.

“I know it merits focus, Petra. I just.. I feel like I can’t give you the right answers. You want to know all of what I was feeling but it’s hard for me to remember everything. Mostly because I’ve tried so hard to forget.”

“I know, Draco,” she said, resting the clipboard on her lap, “But that’s part of the problem. You’re trying so hard to forget all of this instead of addressing it, experiencing it, and moving on. That’s why everything’s cropping up. These attacks you’re having at work, the flashbacks. I’m trying to help you find a pattern. There aren’t any right answers here. I don’t want you to feel like I’m grading you.”

Petra smiled and put her hand on mine. I’d been rubbing the spaces in between my knuckles without thinking.

“I just want you to tell me what happened. We’ll worry about what it all means later. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, trying to loosen up my shoulders and sit back in the chair, “Where should we start?”


	2. Chapter 2

"Let's start with the nightmares," Petra said.

"But they've all but disappeared since I've started coming here," I protested.

"Yes, but have they really gone? Will they come back if for some reason you couldn't come back here. If we address the root cause of them, you might find there's some similarities between them and between other things that are happening."

"Okay," I said, "What about the nightmares?"

When I tried to think of an official day the nightmares began, my brain got fuzzy. I realised that I'd had nightmares frequently for the better part of my life, but it never occurred to me that this was a problem. My mother relished the opportunities to comfort me and my father usually told me to ignore them and often ignored them himself. And I as I grew older and older I wanted my mother's comforts less, hated my father's neglect even more, and the subject of the nightmares had always changed.

I sat overlooking the grand staircase in the front of the Manor, my five year old hands wrapped around an tiny enchanted glass ball I'd received on my third birthday. My mother had wrapped the tiny gift in green paper that shredded instantly when my little hands grabbed it, bits of it flying off into the air and doing dances that made me laugh and cheer. The ball looked gargantuan in my even smaller hands when I'd received it and I remembered sitting in my mother's lap and throwing it across the room. It bounced happily in the air before coming to a complete stop. I cried out for it again and it shook slightly before picking itself off of the ground and flying back into my waiting chubby fingers. My mom was proud that she had thought of it on her own, but my father never liked it. I used to play for hours, throwing it down the Manor steps, watching it bounce high into the air, nearly reaching the massive chandelier before it reached the bottom, waited, wiggled, and sped back up again into my hands. My mother would tell me fondly that it used to make me squeal with laughter and she loved hearing my giggles echo through the Manor halls.

My father only tolerated the distraction until I was about seven years old. By then I had mostly stopped playing with it but I still threw it down the steps occasionally when he wasn't watching. Occasionally it had gone missing, but every time I cried, it found it's way back to my hands. When my father found out, I instead would hear a loud rumble, indicating it'd been locked in a chest. That was usually when my father told me I was growing too old to be playing with baby toys. I don't know what happened that one day when I was seven but I demanded he release the ball from it's hiding place. My mother tried to calm me down, but I wasn't hearing any of it. Father calmly got out of his seat, went into his study, and came walking out with the box. 

After he'd unlocked the box, he grabbed the ball, dropped it on the floor, and stepped on it with a loud crunch in one swift movement so fast I didn't have the time to protest. My heart shattered with the ball and I screamed. He moved his foot, unleashing the remnants of the enchanted ball. The sharp shards of glass came flying towards my hands, responding to my cries and I had no choice but to run from them. My mother shouted, summoning her wand to stop the glass in the air just before it plunged into my hands. One of the sharp pieces had grazed my thumb and I was bleeding. Mother shot an icy glare towards father, but he looked at us both and smiled. I had seen that same smile reflected back up at me when I had picked up Neville's rememberall in the field, years after I'd almost forgot about the ball. No wonder I'd acted like such an arse. It was easier to do that than think again about how I'd howled as the pieces of glass chased me around the room and my father sat and watched.

After that I kept seeing myself bouncing the small glass ball in my dreams down the Manor stairs. The ball felt cold and massive in my hand as I threw it down, hearing each individual clink as it bounced off of the ground. After it had stopped for the second time on the ground at the bottom of the marble floor, I heard shifting and hissing behind me and saw my five year old face spin around. I turned again towards the ball and summoned it back up to me. I threw it down again, revelling in the first and second clinks on the ground down the stairs. The hissing behind me got louder and I spun around again. I could never see what I was looking at in the dream, just my small five year old face, blue eyes widened in horror. I turned back around again to summon the ball. And it always happened this way. The first two clinks sounded and felt hot breath on my neck. When I wrenched myself around, I could finally see the mouth of a huge fanged beast launching towards me as I screamed.

I always thought it had been a dragon, until I'd learned what a baslisk was. Those dreams had continued for awhile, usually the same again and again. I stood bouncing the ball down the Manor steps while the beast hunted me. I never ran and I never found out what it is I saw every single time I looked behind me.

"Did you know about Nagini at the time?" Petra asked.

'What?" I said, shaken out of a daze, "Oh... no. I had no idea. Hadn't seen Nagini yet."

After a moment, Petra looked into my eyes. "I think I might know what this might represent."

"You do?"

She touched my hand and I flinched. "What are you feeling right now, Draco? Are you all here?"

I shook my head.

"I know that bringing this up must've been difficult for you. You must've been very terrified in the dream. You knew what was coming but you didn't run. You couldn't run. There wasn't anything you could do but sit there. And you knew what was coming."

I nodded, trying to acknowledge the truth of it within my own mind. Something felt incredibly wrong about ever admitting that things might be difficult. It made me feel sick inside, almost like I could hear the sounds of Mother's voice, telling me that I had plenty to be grateful for. I barely ever struggled with anything initially growing up. My mother had put me into the best schools for young wizards, designed to recognise and hone magic skills from an early age. They tried to teach us some rudimentary spells that we'd never really master and they gave us sticks we were supposed to practice swishing around like wands. I had always done well and received a lot of praise from teachers. In retrospect, I probably wasn't that remarkable of a student, but my tutors must've been interested in ensuring that my father got value for his money and that they weren't on his shit list. 

I grew up with several silver spoons in my mouth, rocked in a silver cradle and my mother never missed a chance to remind me of it. While I had appreciated her attempt to instil a sense of humility that my father and her family had lacked, I had no context to place these remarks with. I never knew how bad or good life was for anyone else. I had very few friends and spent most of my time in the Manor. The only time I'd visited anyone was at formal parties and functions where childish roughhousing was discouraged and where I was expected to act like a tiny adult. I had no idea what life was like for anyone else, just that my life was never worth complaining or being upset about. If my mother didn't think me ungrateful for being unhappy, my father thought me weak.  
But the arrival of my school letters signalled the largest impending challenge I'd face yet in my life. My father and mother both expected acceptance letters from the best schools across Europe and I had literally no way of how I could improve or harm my chances at acceptance in any of these schools. Both the Hogwarts and Durmstrang letters arrived at the same time on the same day, both addressed to me:

Draco Malfoy  
Room Number 4  
West Wing  
Malfoy Manor  
Mere, Wiltshire  
England

After five tense days, all of the letters they were happy with me receiving lay on the mantelpiece of our largest fireplace in the sitting room, propped up right next to the moving pictures of myself as a child, one with the glass ball in hand. I had received one from every major wizarding school that they thought was worth their attention and my parents had reached the choice with minimal fuss that I'd be going to Durmstrang. I had been looking at the letters across the days with anticipation, excited that I'd be able to open them and learn about each individual school. I'd never received a single piece of mail before. But once my father had decided I'd be going to Durmstrang, he threw all of the other letters in the fire and took the Durmstrang one to his study and filed it away. I didn't bother protesting.

Two weeks later, after my mother had spent our times together talking about all of the great things about Durmstrang, my father announced a change of plans. For some reason I couldn't figure out at the time, I was going to Hogwarts instead, and all of the books I had been reading to prepare me for the rough curriculum and the extra smocks to prepare for the cold were thrown in the fire just like the letters. One of them had been a particularly interesting beginners guide to making items invisible, something that I'd always wanted to learn. I cried sitting in front of the fire, trying not to make a sound and watching the edges of the book curl slowly upwards. My mother chastised my father on the waste of resources and he waved her concerns with a dismissive hand, marching up toward me and hauling me to my feet. That was when he announced my newest and most important mission: to get close to The Boy Who Lived.


	3. Chapter 3

"I got stabbed with a pin," I had squeaked, standing with my arms out in the middle of Madam Malkins.

That wasn't the real reason I had been crying but the truth would have got me far more sneers from my father, who sat only inches away, waiting for the witch to finish measuring me.

"I don't think I poked-"

"Is my son a liar then?" Father had asked, standing from his seat, shadowing the raggedy witch with an icy glare.

"No," she said quickly, focusing back on her work. 

I tried to will the blood from pouring into my face from embarrassment. I wished I could have apologised to her, but I didn't bare to think what sort of reaction my father would have to that. She quickly gathered up her measurements and left me alone, standing by the mirrors. My father had been thrilled to learn that I'd spotted the Boy Who Lived in the robe shop, and that I had the guile to talk to him. When I saw him standing around with a huge smile on his face, looking around the robe shop as if he'd never seen one before, I wanted to hide. But I had spent the better part of that summer studying everything my father had brought before me about the Boy Who Lived, and that was very little. 

Despite all of the pressure my father had put on me, I also had to face the impending reality that this was a chance to make my first real friend. Of course, I'd received the news over summer that I would be joined in Hogwarts by Gregory Goyle and Vincent Crabbe, but I knew them about as well as any of my other friends made through fancy dinner parties and soirees my parents had, which was to say I barely knew them at all. I knew more about The Boy Who Lived, despite how little information there was, than I really did about Crabbe or Goyle. Maybe I could finally make a friend of my own accord, I had thought, even if it was a ploy by my father.

My father had told me that most wizards are impressed by prestige and power, something that has my head shaking until this day. I believed him. How could I not? I didn't have much of anything else to really draw any strength on and so I approached the Boy Who Lived and chatted with him in the only casual way I knew how, in a way that I'd done with Crabbe and Goyle which had earned their respect, but I could tell by the look in his eyes that whatever my father had taught me hadn't worked on The Boy Who Lived. I don't know why I hadn't decided right then and there to cut out the spoiled rich boy routine, but it was probably because I was a spoiled rich boy and because my father provided every incentive for me to keep it up. 

"What are you noticing here, Draco?" Petra asked when I'd finished telling her that my father had assured me that not only would my intimidation tactics work, but rewarded me handsomely with extra pocket money for the trolley on the Hogwarts Express. 

"I was a bloody arse?" I asked.

Petra shook her head. "No. And you weren't an arse. You were a little boy who was just doing what most little boys are told to do - follow their father's wishes."

I thought for a moment before I shrugged. 

"How old are you in all of your nightmares?"

I paused. "I'm either a little baby or the age I am now."

"Right," Petra said, "And what do you think it means that you're a little baby?"

"Well," I thought to myself, "Things were a lot easier when I was a little baby, I suppose. I didn't realise what was going on around me."

"And now that you're an adult?"

"I do know."

"And...?"

It took me a bit to put two and two together. "I guess... both are times when I was sort of not under my father's influence directly."

"Exactly. And where did your father's influence leave you?"

I thought for a second about how I'd arrived onto the platform of the Hogwarts Express and said goodbye hastily to my father and my mother. My mother had swept me up in a huge hug and pretended not to cry.S he dabbed her eyes only slightly with the added chastisement of my father. 

"We're in public Narcissa, for goodness sakes," he'd angrily whispered under his breath. 

My father had made the declaration that I was now, for all intents and purposes, a man. It's a suggestion I laugh at today, but at the time I clicked my heels together and shook his hand firmly like a wizard might shake the Minister's hand just before going off on a dangerous mission. An enormous weight had lifted off of my shoulders when I stepped on the train. Before I got the chance to really search the cabins, I found Goyle and Crabbe, who motioned for me to come and join them. At first I'd grinned, thinking that without the decorum of our parents' dinner parties we might be free to say what had really been on our minds, but quickly I found that wasn't the case. Crabbe, Goyle, and a new girl named Pansy I had just met still talked like there were canapes on floating trays whizzing about through a crowd of networkers. I sighed and rubbed my head. 

Soon I met Blaise, who seemed slightly different than the rest in that he let in some sarcasm through his veneer that obviously took everyone aback, but no one had the gall to question him. Everyone had been going around, bragging about the things they had got up to during the summer and when everyone looked in my direction, it was clear that the pressure was on. I couldn't think of anything else and I brought up meeting The Boy Who Lived in Madam Malkins. Everyone's eyes widened and I continued, enthusiastic to earn some sort of respect. I also let it slip that my father had given me a handsome economic incentive for my behaviour and as the trolley squeaked down the hallway, Pansy had suggested that I use my newfound personal wealth to treat them all to the spoils of the cart.

I clinked the Galleons in my pocket, wanting to save them up for a good racing broom, something I was sure my father would never agree to buy me, after I had learned how to fly. I had always had an interest in Quidditch and tried to catch a few games, but my father always mentioned that it was a garish sport played by dunderheads who didn't have any other skills to offer but physical brute force. I had mentioned the Seeker in passing as an example of how Quidditch players had to make strategies for succeeding and that it wasn't just about raw physical power, and my father shot me a terrifying look. I hesitated for a moment and Blaise agreed with Pansy, encouraging the others to chant my name over and over again. I hesitantly agreed and breathed a sigh of relief when the woman announced the trolley had been cleared out by a black haired boy with glasses in another carriage.

While everyone else whinged at their loss of free sweets, I excused myself from my cart, promising to look for sweets elsewhere on the train. I got a few confused glares when I'd peeked in a few carriage door windows, but I paused when I heard a familiar voice coming from one of the open doors. And as I turned to face it, there sat the Boy Who Lived and a ginger headed kid, surrounded by all of the sweets from the trolley cart. 

Today I still pinch myself thinking of the thoughts that ran through my head. Why hadn't I properly introduced myself? Why hadn't I put two and two together and sorted out that Ron Weasley had obviously been his friend and succeeded where I had failed? Why hadn't I apologised for my earlier comments? I guess the truth was that I didn't think I needed to apologise. If anything, I thought more of the same tripe my father had indoctrinated into me would eventually win him over. It was when I had sneered at Weasley and his green eyes narrowed toward me that I'd realised I'd likely just cursed myself. If The Boy Who Lived forgave as readily as my father did, there was no hope. 

I sulked back to the carriage in one hell of a mood. When Crabbe asked about the sweets, I snapped at him and he looked toward the ground. No one else bothered me for the rest of the train ride, they never asked me to buy them all sweets again, I learned not to brag too much about any good fortune I managed to get, and that was how I'd learned to control the "friendships" I managed to cultivate - the same way my father controlled everyone around him.

"So that was a moment for you," Petra remarked.

I nodded. "I knew I'd failed. I was supposed to secure his friendship, convince him of the rat bastard's mission, and get him to realise whatever false logic of pure blood supremacy my father had stuck into my head. And there wasn't any way I could do that."

"Now can you see why it makes sense? The panic attacks, I mean," Petra said.

It seemed much clearer now. Right after the war and my father's one way trip to Azkaban, my mother and I spent all of our time lounging about the Manor. I say lounging, but we were both clinically depressed. I locked myself into my room, having bad dreams every night, and thinking about what was left for me in the Wizarding World. After two weeks and a few pounds of lost weight, I packed a bag and Floo'ed to Diagon Alley. I went by Gringotts to convert a large sum from my own personal vaults into muggle money and tipped off a goblin to keep his mouth shut if my mother kept calling. I was terrified as I stepped out into the streets of muggle London, wearing the jeans I had seen a few of them don during my trips to Kings Cross. 

Walking across the street slowly, I nearly got mowed down by a black cab staring at the bright lights in Piccadilly Circus. I walked down a few streets before I spotted what the old woman in the pub mentioned: a youth hostel. She looked drunk out of her mind and I half wondered if she just told me what she did so that she could get a penny from me, but I'd paid her well for her information and her silence as well. I got a single room and sat down on the bed, listening for a moment at the sounds of the passing cars and the shouts of the fellow hostel residents. It was then that I became Tom and tried to leave the wizarding world behind. The problem was, the wizarding world had refused to let go.


	4. Chapter 4

"You didn't stay that way for long," Petra noted, "Homeless, I mean."

"Was I really homeless? I mean... I always had the Manor to go back to, even if I didn't want to. And while I'm still not quite sure how it all works out, I had plenty of muggle money. Enough to make a decent life for myself without working."

"But you tried to find work."

"Yeah," I said, recalling how I managed to swing a job as a barista when I met someone in a pub who felt bad that I'd obviously had a few drinks and was complaining, loudly, about my lack of work. I had absolutely no idea what a barista was or did and I burned myself a decent few times with the steam from the espresso machine, but over time I was able to come to terms at least a bit with that aspect of muggle vocabulary.

I can honestly say looking back that during those few days, I was somewhat happy. The barista work reminded me of potions, and while I felt somewhat lonely and isolated amongst a group that so obviously had no idea who I really was, the daily hustle and bustle of the coffee stand in King's Cross station provided ample distraction. It was almost the mirror opposite of the situation I found myself in the wizarding world. In hindsight, I would have chose a different place to work, but maybe I'd still be in a coffee shop, tossing and turning at night, barely able to sleep because of all of the nightmares. 

"When you saw him, that's when the panic started, right?"

I nodded.

"Can you describe to me how you felt when you first saw him?"

I had just finished making a very impatient businessman a huge soy cappuccino with a heaping spoon of sugar when I spotted him walking through King's Cross station, followed by whom I assumed was Ginny, and a fresh faced little kid with messy black hair who skipped behind them, tugging along a huge trunk. I ducked behind the counter nearly knocking a fresh latte out of my coworker's hand in the process as she shouted. My breath become short and my heart pounded. I could feel my blood beating in my ears and I started shaking, my breath feeling shallower by the moment. My coworker passed off the latte and excused herself, sinking down to me and demanding to know what my problem was.

I had seen that rat bastard's face so many times in my dreams, I couldn't even begin to try to count them all, and sometimes I'd see his face too, sitting right next to him in those moments when they were locked into a battle. It wasn't as if I remembered anything horrible about him, just that his face brought all the feelings up at once. Trying to explain that to my muggle coworkers was impossible and they decided to let me go within a few days. I was stuck, again, sitting in the hostel jobless. Only this time, that feeling of my heart beating quick in my chest, the sweaty palms, the racing mind, it kept cropping up constantly and I'd have bouts of pacing in my room, trying to rid my mind of all of the thoughts. I realised I couldn't escape my past unless I really wanted to move to some remote location and, for as good as it sometimes felt to leave the entire world behind, the times I wasn't sitting behind an espresso machine and drowning my thoughts and worries in my work were filled with dread and unhappiness.

My mother embraced me on the steps of the Manor, the same steps I used to bounce the glass ball down. She had advertised high and low, even taking a page of the Prophet, for anyone who had any news about me to get in touch with her. I'm sure a few witches or wizards saw me working in Kings Cross, but I doubt anyone wanted to report to my mother I was still alive, but instead tittered to themselves at the depths I had sunk. Rita Skeeter had already written a speculative column about my tragic suicide by muggle train, capitalising on wizard ignorance and any recent reports of someone found under the Tube. 

All of the commotion she had caused looked so odd draped in front of me across the couches of her sitting room. Articles and posters with my drained, dark face staring back up at me contrasted with the complete and utter silence I got from her before I left. I understood that she had very likely been depressed as well, facing a certain kind of social isolation I had, but as far as I knew she still had some of her old aristocratic friends. I had no one, except maybe Blaise. But even he wasn't always completely supportive. Even his nicest compliments were couched with inevitable jovial insults. 

"And then the panic continued?" Petra asked, "Did you stop having attacks?"

"I stopped for a bit. I started getting involved in other things."

"Other things?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Such as?"

It didn't take a few more weeks of being home after my muggle stint that I decided I had to choose something to do with my life. Maybe there wasn't a wizarding alternative to being a barista, but there had to be something else I could do. I used to go sit in pubs with a cloak over my head and drink a bit so no one would see me, listening to the conversations around me. One night in the pub, I had heard a group of young upstart wizards complaining about their Auror training, how it had taken over their life and this was the first break they'd had in ages. They continued whinging on about how they couldn't get any girlfriends in a state like this when I tossed the idea over in my head. An Auror? I briefly indulged in a happy fantasy about making a new name for myself. Redemption. Would becoming an Auror show everyone how misguided I knew I was? Or would I just make new enemies?

The Crabbe and Goyle families had continued to invite us to their low key soirees, but their invitations stopped soon as The Prophet got wind that I had enrolled in Auror training. Luck weighed on my side as there had been a significant debt in the amount of wizards stepping up for Auror training and they had just released a big campaign encouraging young wizards to get involved, assuring them that they wouldn't be like soldiers going to war as they would have been just years ago. "Breath Free and Become A Trainee," their slogan rang. They had even promised a fast track of Auror training that took the usual three years down to one year if you could prove that you've faced some of the more terrible aspects of dark magic in the war. I figured no one except the dark wizards themselves had faced those terrible aspects but me and I promised them that being trained like a Death Eater meant I could understand the psychology behind those types of wizards.

The reactions were polarised. A brief sympathy campaign, arguing for the forgiveness and redemption of old Death Eaters shortly rooted for me against many, many others who argued that my acceptance into Auror training was clear proof of the lax standards of Auror acceptance imposed by the newest Minister for Magic. A rave of paranoia swept over as individuals suggested I was infiltrating the wizarding government and feeding secrets to my father in Azkaban. It was then that they restricted my contact with my father to letters only, which I was secretly thrilled about. The Ministry defended itself mostly and didn't bother with trying to redeem me or instil any confidence in my own reputation. They simply told everyone that they knew exactly how to handle me and they had all the security measures put in place to ensure I wouldn't blink without a Ministry official knowing. It didn't exactly help my redemption pipe dream.

That's when the idea that someone might have tampered with my wand slipped in and wouldn't leave. Another Auror in training mentioned it in an offhand comment, something about how Auror trainees sometimes hazed each other by trying to tamper with each others' wands or replacing them with new, trick wands. The one I had received from Ollivander's new shop after the battle started feeling odd in my own hand. I wasn't sure why. After a few weeks I couldn't stop getting the thought out of my head and it started affecting my work. I hesitated before casting defensive and offensive spells. My tracking and sneaking became that much more obvious and others started commenting on my poor work.

"What does that sound like?" Petra said.

"What do you mean?"

"Someone tampering with your things? Or tampering with the things of others?"

Instantly I recalled sneaking around the Quidditch pitch, following Dobby just before the game was set to start, watching him mess about in the equipment room and not knowing what he was doing. The sounds of Marcus calling my name pulled me away from the scene and I found myself marching out towards the pitch, gloating in the Firebolts my father had bought, and revelling in the reality of my first game. As I played, the broom felt awkward underneath me, almost like it had a mind of it's own. It went in directions I had never intended, but it never bucked me off or did anything extreme, so I tried to act normally. And when the rogue bludger pelted itself towards me, the broom swerved me sideways before I could think, so I wasn't ready to complain. 

After the fiasco with the charmed bludger, everyone had to submit their equipment for magical detection to ensure that no other dangerous charms had been placed on other equipment. Only the bludger and my broom were found with charms, mine enhanced to give me greater speed, accuracy, and to avoid bludgers. I thought about telling them that Dobby had snuck into the equipment room, but I didn't think my father's house elf sneaking into the equipment room would help my chances and it might look like my father had tried to kill Harry, which I had believed. Instead I tried to convince them I had no idea that a charm had been placed on my broom, but they didn't buy it. I was given a week's worth of detention and I was chucked from the Quidditch team.

I spent the remainder of the semester depressed, even mentioning it in a letter to my father, who promptly sent me a Howler for losing the match:

"IT SAYS A LOT ABOUT YOUR SUPPOSED INHERENT GREATNESS AT QUIDDITCH IF YOU CAN'T EVEN WIN WITH A BEWITCHED BROOM!!" the red envelope screamed at me before bursting into flame.

When I summoned Dobby and questioned him about it, he confirmed that my father had ordered him to the Quidditch pitch to charm my broom. When I asked what else he'd been doing, he confirmed that he'd charmed the bludger so that Harry Potter might get hurt. I didn't believe him when he said that my father hadn't ordered that, but that Dobby had done it all by himself to try and get him to leave Hogwarts somehow. I thought about forcing him to tell my father about his plans, but something had changed. I wanted more than anything to be on that team, tried constantly the previous year to ensure that it was a great way to try and keep my eye on The Boy Who Lived, if not become his friend. My father had to buy my way in and I only lost my seat because he had zero faith in my ability to win on my own. Why should I return the favour of having any faith in him being able to do whatever it was he was up to on his own?

"So you were going against your father?" Petra said.

"For the first time... since I guess I was a baby and didn't know any better."

"And throughout this entire time, the chamber gets opened and everything starts happening..."

"My father was disappointed that people were suspecting that Harry was the heir of Slytherin and he pushed me to tell everyone that it was me. I tried being horrible as possible, even saying I wanted people to die, just so people would start to suspect it was me."

"But..." Petra led. I'd briefly talked about this before.

"Everyone knew I wasn't, but I only admitted it to Crabbe and Goyle. Behind everyone's backs, I tried to find out what my father was doing. I kept asking Dobby to spy on him, but Dobby could barely do it. I at least had Dobby tell me everything he was trying to do to help Harry and he had mentioned something about Harry writing in a diary. There wasn't anything I could do but tell Dobby that he had to promise me that he would never let my father hurt Harry."

"That's not all you did," Petra said, looking at me, "You did more than that."

I looked at my feet nervously. "I told Dumbledore."

The walk up the winding gryphon stair was the longest I'd ever taken. Dumbledore had smiled at me, placed his hands on my shoulders, and told me everything would be fine and he knew exactly how to help Harry now. 

"So what do you have here, Draco? When you started training as an Auror, how did your father take it?"

I snorted. "He said I was betraying my family name."

"And then you start feeling like someone's tampered with your wand. Just like someone tampered with your broom."

"Yes," I said.

"And if your father had never tampered with your broom, if you had never been thrown off of the team... do you think you would have thought of going against him? Of... betraying your family name?"

I thought for a moment. "Probably not until later..."

"So the next time you feel yourself growing paranoid about whether something's been tampered with you might want to ask yourself... what question?"

"Am I betraying the family name?"

"Right."


	5. Chapter 5

"It progressed from there you said," Petra commented. 

It was the second week of therapy and we'd already spent the first few sessions exploring things I could barely talk about before. After our first few sessions, I went back to my flat exhausted but thankful I had finally moved out of the Manor. At this point, I didn't really know what my mother knew about what was happening, but I didn't really want that same old feel of her eyes baring on my back. I wasn't sure precisely how long this entire process was going to take, but I was grateful for the time to be away from all of the stress of work and to focus on things I really had never given a second thought about.

"Yeah, the paranoia about my wand went away, but that was only I think because we stopped doing practical exercises with wands and we moved onto a bit of theory."

Becoming an Auror was nothing like taking a Defense Against the Dark Arts course. While some of the more gory and gristly aspects of the Dark Arts are saved mention because the likelihood of most witches or wizards running into them are low, Auror training was designed to get you up close and personal with some of the worst aspects of magic. Some of them I knew all too well, some of them I hadn't even heard of. But it was two spells in particular that kept haunting me, so much so that they gave me nightmares.

"Why do you think it was those two spells?" Petra asked.

"I don't know. I heard about all sorts of types of evil magic when I was training. Spells that could flay skin, turn blood to ice, force you to cry... I even heard one spell that would break every bone in your body except your skull all at once. I never came across anyone that had happened to but the accounts of the wizards and witches who had survived it told that it was excruciating. Possibly even more so than the Cruciatus curse."

"But these two spells kept coming back to you?"

"Yes. I couldn't stop dreaming about one and thinking about the other."

There was a book in the Ministry of Magic that was filled with such terrible spells, it was kept in a highly restricted area, moved once a week, and required the highest level of security clearance as well as a security detail in order to view. It was simply called The Obitus and it had been found somewhere in some sort of tomb of an ancient Anglo Saxion King, clutched in the arms of one of his servants. No one had any idea who wrote it and the muggles who found it threw it away, not seeing the ink that doesn't appear to muggles and thinking it some sort of discarded diary. It wasn't even a substantial book. It was a tiny collection of parchments tied together with string that nearly fell apart if you touched them. Of course, there was also the rumour that a disease curse was left on the book so that anyone who touched it died because the muggles who found it eventually wasted away from a mysterious sickness no one understood.

I was escorted to The Obitus with a number of Aurors and Barty Crouch himself, all of them giving me the gravest of looks. Before I stepped into Crouch's office, he'd been arguing with another official about whether I should be allowed to see The Obitius, but eventually they all relented as the wizard in charge of approving all new Aurors was adamant that every single Auror must see The Obitus, regardless of their bad reputation. The book was bound behind a glass case and a guard that stood guard by it did the spell that flipped through the few pages on display. The ink appeared bold and clear in front of my eyes and I scanned the lines, trying to hold back my disgust. 

The thing most training Aurors would discover is that The Unforgivable Curses are only the "unforgivable" ones because they are relatively easy to practice, but not because they are the worst spells anyone has ever divised. The Obitius contained what I thought at least were the worst spells ever written. Some of them took days or months to prepare and cast, but their effects were disastrous. None of these were practical in the sense that they could be cast by a Death Eater who happened upon you surprisingly, but they were exactly the sorts of tools that a depraved torturer with amazing magical skill would want. It was such a well kept secret that any Auror who made it to that stage of training took the Vow to never mention it to anyone who hadn't passed Auror training.

Amongst them was the Anastasis spell for resurrecting the dead. There were plenty of other resurrection spells, usually ones that created Inferi, but this one combined the best elements of the resurrection spells with the added twist of a highly skilled Imperio and other enchantments. You could not only bring someone back from the dead with this spell but you could do it without any part of their body, which most resurrection spells required. And when you brought them back, they would be exactly everything you wanted them to be down to their hair colour and height. The Anastasis didn't just bring people back, but it brought them back to be exactly what you wanted them to be, ready to do your whim at a moment's notice. It took ages to cast, but if you had a good number of willing servants, it was probably worth it. They had speculated that all the poison tasters and loyal guard of ancient kings were actually Anastasi. 

The night after I had seen The Obitius, I tossed and turned in my bed in the Manor. I kept seeing visions of green in my mind, blonde hair flying through the air, my father collapsing and dying in the midst of a battle with Aurors. The opulent funeral with my mother decked out in black played before my shut eyes, watching her dab her eyes just the right number of times to give people the impression that she was actually sad he was gone. Then I saw myself with a shovel in the graveyard, sweating as I moved the recently sprinkled dirt, too afraid to use a spell in case it might conflict with the oldest and the most ancient of magics. I knew the spell normally took months to cast, but in my mind it took mere seconds until my father sprung from his grave, not a hair out of place. 

I had planned it all out. Summers in Crete with a father who smiled. Him sitting in a booth of a famous Quiddtich pitch, clapping at my performance softly. But the father who emerged from the grave was never that father. He would snarl, eyes turned a complete shade of bright yellow without an iris or a pupil in sight, saliva frothing out of his moth and his limbs contorting into the wrong shapes. He would lunge at me and I'd wake up in the Manor, sweating out of my sheets, sometimes screaming when the portrait of my father that hung in my room startled me with it's stare. My mother complained when I had the house elves take it down, but I had begun to see him with yellow eyes out of the side of my gaze.

"That's when you started dreaming about your father coming back?" Petra noted.

"Yes. He was in Azkaban while I was doing the Auror training."

"Why do you think this spell bothered you so much?" Petra asked.

"I guess... I had wanted something that would give me the father I never got. And I still sort of wanted his approval, all the way from Azkaban. I kept going through these cycles of wanting his approval and then not wanting it. I didn't really know what to think."

Petra looked at me sideways, "And what about the other time he was in Azkaban? And the time when you thought he would be imprisoned? What happened during those times? What do you remember about it? I want you to think about this because I think these spells just aren't random. They're connected. The reason they bother you is the same even if it doesn't look like it."

I was only an infant when the first War had ended and my father had lied about being under the Imperius curse and until the day of the World Quidditch Cup, there was never much reason to worry about him ever going back to Azkaban again. The occasional Death Eater came to our house for a formal dinner, but most had been well behaved. I had lied to him the night of the Quidditch match, too afraid of what I was witnessing with the Death Eaters storming the camping grounds and my father putting on one of their masks. I ran away but I told him I had got lost in the crowd. He hadn't even noticed I had disappeared from his side in the Minister's box until after he fled from the Dark Mark in the sky. 

I arrived at the Manor first, terrified and halfway comforted by my mother. My father arrived later in the evening, hair ruffled, gathering his things and telling us he had to meet with some of the Death Eaters and he'd send back someone to protect us, knowing Aunt Bellatrix would probably have to be there too. The ones that arrived, who I'd later discover were the Carrows, scared my mother. I could tell by the looks of apprehension in her face. She sent constant owls to my father, trying to find out where he was and demanded I stay by her side at all times. But I was a wilful little brat who was ashamed to sleep in my mother's bedroom. And one night, after she'd gone to sleep, I snuck out to find the kitchens, which I had never seen because house elves had always brought our food.

But the Manor was labyrinthian in places I hardly even explored and after an hour of walking around, I found myself standing in the doorway of my father's office, a place he had told me never to go. I stood for a moment with my wand, contemplating whether I should go in or not. The Carrows appeared behind me, making me jump and drop my wand. One of them grabbed it quickly before I could blink and the other held my arms. They taunted me, telling me I shouldn't be out of bed at that time, asking me what I was doing by my father's office, telling me the rat bastard was on his way back, telling me I had better walk in my father's footsteps, and loudly contemplating whether I was old enough to get a Dark Mark.

I broke free of their grip and tried to make a run for it, but my feet and arms shrunk, my skin grew fur, and I felt my body shapeshift. Whatever stomach I had rolled as I was hurled backwards towards them, flung through the sky and turning upside down. I could hear their laughter in my strong ears, but I couldn't form any words in response.

"Ooh! Let me try! A badger this time!" one of them had said and I felt my body shapeshift again. How it was possible to feel the same sickness in a different stomach was beyond me. My hearing, sight, and skin changed. I could do nothing to protest or to stop them. I heard a weird high pitched noise coming from my mouth as I did my best to scream, but that only made them laugh louder. 

"A cat now!" My body shifted again. I shuddered hard when a loud bang from my father's office announced the arrival of Barty Crouch Jr. who immediately asked what the Carrows had been doing before joining in on their laughter. My skin changed once more, this time rough and green and shrunk down to an incredible size, still bouncing and careening through the air with a heavy shell on my back. 

"An elephant!" one of the Carrows said.

"Don't be ridiculous! Do you want to destroy the Manor? Lucius is just about to get back. Something small!" Crouch said over another loud crash in the office.

"Ooh! Ooh! You've got to try him as a ferret!" the other said, "That one's the best one and matches his sneakiness so well." My skin began to grow fur and my back cracked as it stretched.

"WHAT IS GOING ON HERE!" my father shouted. 

I fell from the sky in a mid-animal state, hitting the ground hard. One of the Carrows cast a spell and I felt my body return to normal, except for my arm which sent excruciating stabs of pain down the length of it when I tried to get up to escape, and failed. My mother came running down the hallway with her own wand lit, and I spent the next few days lying in my own bed with the occasional glass of Skelegrow to mend the break. My father had refused to take me to St. Mungos and my mother told me I only had myself to blame for not staying in bed.

"And that's the spell," Petra said.

"Yeah," I said rubbing my neck. I could get used to the idea of being afraid of a spell in The Obitus. That made sense. But this spell was one of the first ones I ran across in Auror training because some of the minor criminals had used it to temporarily incapacitate Aurors as they made their way off with whatever treasure they sought to get. The dangerous ones would try to kill you, but it was the thieves who sent an Animalus curse your way. 

"But you understand, Draco," Petra said, "Why this little innocuous spell would bother you? Why both of these would make you think about your Dad? In Azkaban? And when you couldn't do anything about it? And no one would listen to you?"

I had made the trek up the gryphon staircase again, not knowing who else to confide in. Ever since Moody had put that spell on me, just temporarily, I knew something wasn't right, but I couldn't bear to tell Dumbledore there were Death Eaters in my house and I didn't think he would ever believe if I told him I thought the bastard was trying to return. I told him to keep his eye on Moody, that there was something with him, something I didn't trust. Dumbledore tried to assure me that everyone would forget about his prank eventually, but he saw something in my eyes and asked me to tell him what had caused me all the suspicion, what really? And I couldn't say. I grew furious with his inability to trust me, thinking that if The Boy Who Lived had any suspicion about anyone, it would be thoroughly investigated and I stormed out of his office. He didn't stop me.

"So here you are," Petra said, "An Auror learning new spells and you just happen to come across one that was used to torture you and you start to think about a time when your father wasn't there to protect you and, even when he did show up late, neither your mother or your father bothered with comforting or even telling the Carrow and Crouch to never do that again. And then you were forced to go to school with one of them leering behind your back, embarrassing you in front of your classmates. And that makes you think of the other times your father wasn't there to protect you... which is why, after your exposure to The Obitus, you start dreaming about your father coming back, but not how you pictured..."

I nodded. Each time my father had gone away, I hoped he would come back different. But it almost always seemed like he came back worse.

"It seems to me like you still now and definitely did then want a father who could protect you... but you got one that didn't. Frequently."

I nodded again. Sometimes had had no idea what to say when Petra spoke.

"Now... can you tell me about how you felt when he went to Azkaban?"


	6. Chapter 6

For a millionth time that day, I shook my head, burying my forehead in my hands.

"What's that look about?" Petra asked, "You keep doing it instead of talking."

I saw the smile play across her face and I knew she was half kidding, half not. 

"I just... don't really like thinking too much about what I did back then... I was such an insufferable little prat. And Potter never deserved any of it, really. I mean.. sometimes he was a prat too. Maybe we're both prats, but... I could have laid off a little bit or something."

"You keep saying that every time we bring up the things you did when you were younger," Petra noted.

"Well... whenever we talk about it makes me feel like I'm sort of trying to excuse myself for it. Like, I did it all because of my father and therefore it's just perfectly okay."

"And from your tone I'm guessing you don't feel it was okay."

"It wasn't," I confessed, not wanting to look Petra in the eye, "I was horrible to him. And he didn't really deserve it. I don't like to think I'm trying to excuse myself for what I did just because of what was going on."

Petra readjusted in her seat. "Do you think you're really trying to excuse yourself for this? Because I don't hear that."

I sighed. "I don't know. It's just what I feel every time we bring it up. I feel like I've got to reiterate what a complete jerk I was, because this makes me seem like there was a good excuse for it, and there really wasn't. I should have known better. I had countless amounts of chances to just lay off and I never took not one of them."

"Draco..." Petra began delicately, "I don't want you to think I'm absolving you for what you did to Harry Potter. I can't absolve you of that. You're only going to get that sort of resolution from Harry himself, if that's something you want to pursue..."

The thought made me sick to my stomach.

"... But... you need to start putting this all into context of the reality of the situation, because the context does very much matter. It's not that it excuses you of your behaviour, but it helps you realise what led you to that so that maybe you can avoid ever being in that position again."

I nodded quietly, not knowing what to say.

"Let's think about where you've been. What Harry always represented to you. When did you first hear about him?"

My father had mentioned him multiple times growing up in passing, but never in a positive light. The name "Potter" in my household was always met with secret whispers of shame. When I got older, I'd come to realise that my father was deeply horrified that a small baby managed to defeat the only person he seemed to ever admire or give any real respect to. "Potter" was almost like an embarrassing affair, one where a rich, wealthy man finds himself awake the next morning after too much Firewhisky lying by someone else's maidservant.

Once it had been decided that I was going to Hogwarts, my father had begun spending more time with me than he had ever before. The Manor is as cold as it looks to the outsiders, and most of the time, save for when I was too young to watch myself, my mother, father, and I spent time in separate wings of the house, barely ever interacting. We had dinner together over a large table that made it difficult to have a quiet conversation couched with the social understanding that shouting was never becoming of an individual of class. A handful of occasions my mother played with me as a toddler, but they usually ended quickly and abruptly if my father passed by the doorway of wherever we were playing. Even during our "parties", playtime wasn't tolerated in even the slight sense and wasn't even possible in some of the ridiculous, starched frocks I wore. I spent long hours having dull conversations with Crabbe and Goyle about the silly things muggles got up to and believed. It was tiring, dull, and frustrating. And pretty soon I grew tired of talking about muggles. For people who considered themselves so high above muggles, they sure did seem to love talking about them. Only in short glimpses of conversation with some of the other pureblood children did I finally get some sort of interesting information about Harry Potter and his scar. But most of the other children had just as much shame as their parents.

But finally, my father and I were spending loads of time together. He gave me everything he could find to read about The Boy Who Lived and I swallowed all of the data as it allowed me to sit with him in his study. He couldn't let me do magic with his wand, but he taught me some of the basic movements that first years would be taught, gave me introductions to Charms and Herbology in order to get me ahead of the other kids, possibly to offer The Boy Who Lived a chance at a great studying partner. He even invited Snape over to introduce me to a few basic potions, which I wasn't very good at at first, but I loved trying. When I look back at this time, it was actually considerably stressful. My father took any failure on my part as a personal attack, and put an incredible amount of pressure on me to be ahead of my class.

Still, almost everything about my impending trip to Hogwarts was exciting. I looked forward to the day I would impress Harry Potter with my head start on some of the basics he'd be learning and maybe my knowledge of pure blood family lines would spark his interest, especially given our family trees were connected. My father never mentioned it, but I thought that more than anything Potter probably wanted some understanding of his parents or his family, something I thought I could probably give him. My first trip to Ollivander's was the crescendo of my excitement. My father's eyes bored on my back as Ollivander handed me the first wand, hands shaking. Most wizards have to go through a few trials before they find the right wand, but I found mine immediately. As soon it was in my hand, I felt a rush of glee and my breath quickened. It felt like part of me. Something was mine. For the first time in my life, I now owned something that was fully and completely mine.

My father had smirked at me and Ollivander bowed again and again.

"Interesting, the exact same first wand that I sold your father..." Ollivander muttered.

I spun around on my heel with a grin. "Is it really?" I asked, nearly jumping out of my shoes, "Is it really the same as your first wand?"

My father took a look at the wand in my hand and something about his expression changed. "That was my first wand," he said quietly, only to himself, "Almost exactly." 

He crouched, pulling his cane from his robes and I flinched, relaxing when he popped the silver snake head off of the end and affixed my wand easily to it. He grinned and looked like he was bridging on tears. "It fits!" he said happily, "I knew it would," And my father, for the first time since before I could remember, swept me up in an enormous hug. 

"Maybe one day it could be mine then?" I said, holding the snake head in my hand, swishing it around.

"Take care with wands," Ollivander said gently and my father jerked back suddenly. He looked at Ollivander and back at me, like he'd come out of a trance. Taking the wand out of my hand, he broke the snake head off, fixing his own elm wand back onto it, snapping it quickly into his cane and getting quickly to his feet. I followed him quickly out of the door.

Petra smiled at me. "You didn't sound like such a prat then," she said.

I shook my head. "That was before though...", I said under my breath.

"Can I ask you something, Draco?"

"Sure."

"If this wasn't you we were talking about, if we were talking about anyone else, any other person, and I were to tell you that this brief two second public display of affection was the closest thing this person came towards a happy memory, the only thing that they felt they could use to try and cast a Patronus... would you not feel some sympathy for them?"

"Well, when you put it like that... There's a lot of other stuff there too."

"Right, you were a boy who was getting groomed to befriend someone, who had never had a real friend in his life. Who only could get his father to pay attention and care for him for as much as he could talk about someone else who he couldn't even befriend."

I didn't say anything, but I knew it to be true. Just as my playmates' lives had seemed to become dominated with talk about muggles, so my life in Hogwarts became dominated with talk about Potter. If my classmates weren't discussing what sort of heroic feat he'd managed to best at any turn, all of my father's owls were inquiring as to what his activities were and how I was trying to get myself closer to him. As much as I tried to write about other things, tried to steer our conversations to anything but Potter, the subject always seemed to go back toward him. If I delayed responding to my father's immediate requests to hear about Potter's activities, I'd expect a howler. I was so busy with regular school work and constantly reporting on Potter that I didn't have any time to write my mother and, on the few occasions that she managed to write me, the letters were dry reports of the social goings-on of the pureblood elite, barely readable for even the poshest of wizarding papers and absolutely nothing to do with her real day to day life.

The first year I put up with it, the second year I tried to ignore it, but as the third and fourth years past I grew incredibly angry at even the slight mentions of Potter's name. My father continued to send confusing signals about how I was supposed to handle Potter, constantly expecting me to befriend him, but revelling in any detail about personal battles between us and egging me on. And when I didn't best Potter in those battles, and I did fail most of them, I was met with rage. And that rage seemed to transfer into everything that I did, even to the point where I started slipping at Potions, my best subject, due to carelessness, which Snape pretended to not notice.

"And that's why it was so easy for her," Petra said, now pushing the story into one of the worst chapters for me. This was my own sense of a secret affair with a servant. 

Since Umbridge arrived, she'd taken special notice of me, pulling me out of the Divination classes I had hated and inviting me to meetings in her office. A few of the other students had these meetings, but I still felt particularly special having someone's undivided attention. She asked me how things were at home, how I was getting along with all of my friends, and, when I mentioned that the stem ginger cookies she had in her office were the same kind my mother used to sneak to me as a toddler, she always had them out any time I came to visit. 

"You're on the Quidditch team aren't you?" she asked sweetly, pouring me another cup of tea.

I shrugged, embarrassed. I'd been chucked from the team after the stunt with the broom, but at the start of the next school year, my father, enraged that I wasn't automatically put on the team again, threatened to rescind the donated brooms if I didn't get back on the team, so they added me back, but only as an alternate. I spent most of the games sitting in the sidelines, polishing all of the brooms after the game, and collecting the towels. When I'd told my father about the demotion, he was too busy asking about Harry's progress in the Triwizard Tournament to care. "Sort of," I said, stuffing another ginger biscuit in my mouth.

"But you'd like to be Seeker again, wouldn't you?" she said, grinning at me. Her eyes twinkled as she set the teapot down. "If you ask me, there's something not particularly right about a kind and generous donation going under-appreciated by your peers. Your father is an important man, and they should treat you with the same importance."

I grinned, trying to hide it with another biscuit.

After being reinstated as Slytherin seeker, I got more cocky than I'd been in awhile, something Umbridge didn't seem to notice. My winning attitude earned none of the familiar upturned lips or clicking noises of disapproval that the slightest offence earned me from my parents. And when I did something right, I was an angel sent from the Heavens. 

"But even someone who was so kind to you," Petra noted, "Was someone you didn't want to be around."

"There was something... kind of fake about it," I admitted.

Umbridge's clear priority was to catch Harry snooping about. She and Filch were sure the students were meeting somewhere on the grounds, and as one of her student confidantes, anxious to win some of her approval, I volunteered myself with the task of trying to find where he was snooping. In exchange for my loyalty, I not only got the warmth of her familiar smile, but she passed a tiny quantity of Polyjuice potion towards me, warning me gravely that no one was to know about it, not even Filch. I was the only one she'd entrusted with the potion and she encouraged me to use it to find out where the groups were, if I had to impersonate a student to find it. Obviously there were so many problems with giving a student Polyjuice potion and I never mentioned how I managed to find their hiding spot so well, not even to my father when I proudly wrote down how I'd busted Harry Potter.

I snuck the hair off of a Gryffindor first year and suited up in some robes Umbridge had given me, following a gaggle of students whispering about Dumbledore's Army into the Room of Requirement. I could have immediately turned on my heel and reported them, and that had been the plan, but for some reason I had stalled. A few fellow students who were the friends of whatever tiny wizard I impersonated patted me on the back warmly as I entered the room. We cast the first few groups of defensive spells and some of my summers spent begrudgingly reviewing the next year's materials with my increasingly impatient father had paid off. 

"Brilliant!" Potter had said, clapping me on the back when I'd managed to stun a dummy into the next room, "I've never seen a first year do such an impressive stun. Good work, mate!"

I was stifling tears before we got to the lesson on casting the Patronus. As Potter told us to think of the happiest memory we could muster, my mental searches were coming up blank. I didn't know what to use. Nothing stuck out until I looked down at my wand and saw my father swoop me into a hug. But the faint wisp at the end of my wand ended as abruptly as the hug had and before the end of the lesson, everyone cast some form of Patronus as my wand brightened at the end only enough to light a dim corridor. Nearing the end of the lesson, I got angrier and angrier, my face growing red. Even though my Polyjuice would last long enough for the lesson, I felt the hairs stand on the back of my neck. I felt naked in a way I'd never felt before and I jumped when Granger had patted me on the back. 

"The Patronus is really hard." I could see the sympathy in her eyes and it made my face grow redder, "It's okay if you can't cast one right away. Just give it some time. I'm sure you'll be able to find one soon! It's tough at first, but you'll find the right one eventually."

I found myself curious, despite all of the frustration. I let my arm drop. "What's yours?"

Granger smiled ear to ear."When I got my Hogwarts letter... I slept with it under my pillow for weeks... At first, my parents were so surprised, they almost didn't let me go because they didn't know about Hogwarts at all. But when I explained it them, they asked me if they could put it in this huge fancy frame. They almost went around showing it to everyone before Dumbledore came to visit them." She laughed, "They hung it up by my bed, in the end, but... yeah... that's what I think about."

I recalled the stern painted portrait of my father hanging by my own bed. As Potter announced the end of the lesson, I marched out quickly, ignoring the voices of my "friends" calling out for me. I went straight to Umbridge's office, at first earning a chastising look for being a nosy first year before I could explain to her who I was. I clutched a stem ginger cookie in an unfamiliar hand and Umbridge reached across the table to put her hand over mine. Her eyes were twinkling again as she looked into the eyes that weren't mine.

"I'm so, so proud of you Draco," she said, "You did the right thing."

I didn't say a word, but the anger subsided. 

Naturally as her primary confidante, I was made leader of her Inquisitorial Squad, and I revelled in the opportunity to pay back anyone who expressed a displeasure about my attitude or my father. With new added powerful backing from Umbridge, I barely ever needed Crabbe and Goyle to be goons and I enacted a terrible reign of vengeance on everyone, making Umbrdige's already tight grip even tighter.

"Now, see this is where you're failing to add the context of everything again," Petra chided.

"Which context?"

"You said that you took advantage of this power to be mean to all of your classmates, including Harry Potter," she said.

"Yes, and I was. I was mean to all of them because I could get away with it."

"But what I see is a grown woman who took advantage of the emotional vulnerability of a little boy because she could get away with it," Petra noted.

I was stumped. Despite her public reputation for harshness, she had been one of the few people in my life I could ever describe as "gentle".

"Not only that, but answer me this, Draco. What would have happened if you had succeeded?"

"In what?"

"What would have happened if you would have become Harry Potter's friend?"

I thought for a moment, trying to imagine the least likely scenario that seemed possible.

"You would have had to betray him," Petra said, putting her hand over mine as Umbridge had done years before. "Whether to your father, whether to Umbridge, or whether to Voldemort. At some point, you would have had to betray him, or you would have been forced to. There was no real potential or possibility of a friendship between you two. Even if you had been successful for the mistake you keep bullying yourself for making... nothing good would have come of it."

She sat down again in her chair again as I looked away, trying to take it all in.

 

"That's what I mean by context."


	7. Chapter 7

"Then you were having flashbacks and nightmares," Petra said, "As your Auror training went on."

I nodded. My fingertips felt foreign as they touched each other, along with the rest of my body. As we got closer and closer along the timeline nearest to present, I wanted more and more to escape everything. We had discussed my latent urges to not talk about any of it, to suppress it all. I knew that was part of why my own body started to feel foreign in these moments, why I felt like I was seeing myself, like my life was actually me living inside a Pensive, watching myself walk and go through the motions without being able to do anything about it.

"Now," Petra warned, "As we get closer to discussing some of the more recent things, I can read from your body language that you're withdrawing a little bit."

I nodded again before I corrected myself, my voice sounding cacophonous and awkward. "Yes, I am... I know, it's just... I don't really know how to think of things sometimes and what to say."

"There's no one right thing to say here. I just want to hear how you're feeling about this because in what you've gone through, Draco, no one has ever asked you that. No one has ever made your feelings, your thoughts, or your entire being a priority. You've always existed as a means for others. And part of your healing process is going to be trying to establish yourself to yourself, trying to realise that you alone exist and that's a valid thing. Does that make sense?"

I didn't nod this time. "Yes, it does... it's just difficult."

Petra nodded, giving my hand a firm grasp. "Can you tell me what happened next in your training?"

Letting a large breath in, I began by explaining that we were just beginning the Concealment and Disguise portion of our training. Those who had N.E.W.T.s in Transfiguration were often allowed to skip some of the courses, but I obviously hadn't had much time for N.E.W.T.s and had only skated into McGonnagal's N.E.W.T. course with an E in my Transfiguration O.W.L. It wasn't as if I didn't care, but the truth is that I spent less and less time on schoolwork as the years grew on, but none more sharply than after they put my father in Azkaban.

Those who hadn't had the foundation of Transfiguration had to start from the beginning. At first we began with changing ordinary objects into other ordinary objects. Buttons into chairs. A yarn ball into a cauldron. Soon enough we moved onto changing living things to objects and objects to living things. Gulping as I held my wand and looked down at the small pastry sitting on the table, I tried to imagine what it would look like shapeshifting into a bird. Our instructor thought it might be nicer on the animals if we first began by trying to turn the objects back into animals rather than the other way around. As the words of the spell tripped over my tongue, I flinched as I moved my wand and a puff of smoke came from the pastry, blocking my eyes. As I batted the smoke away with my hands, I saw the bird, lying limply on the table with it's wings spread.

An obnoxious wizard next to me jeered, elbowing me and pointing out my failure as the class started to gather around me to witness my mistake, but my eyes remained fixed on the bird lying lifeless with it's wings spread, never flying again. My mouth felt dry and I dropped my wand as my knees buckled, vision going black. When I had come two, they were still jeering, but the instructor had the decency to clean up the bird and advise I spend the rest of the lesson focusing on turning larger objects into tiny objects and visa versa. 

"What happened?" Petra asked, "What did the bird remind you of?"

The image appeared in my head almost instantly because both of the birds had been lying in exactly the same way. My mouth dried and I avoided her eyes.

"The Vanishing Cabinet."

Petra grabbed her clipboard and it's edges, giving me this look that used to make me see red coming from anywhere else before I started our regular sessions. "Tell me about the Vanishing Cabinet."

It wasn't just the Cabinet, because it began long before that. My father stopped sending frequent owls just as I got recruited to Umbridge's Squad. I almost felt an instant relief from my shoulders when I didn't see my owl swooping past me in the Great Hall on breakfast, but as the weeks droned on, I grew worried and tried to throw myself into the Squad's activities to distract from the fact that my father hadn't written in weeks. I sent a hasty letter to my mother when the sixth week had passed without contact just as the first O.W.L. exams were starting. I received an owl back the next day, a curt response notifying me that my father had an important task and was not to be disturbed under any circumstances. Nothing else. Obviously, by the end of the year, everything had come out and I knew exactly what important task he was supposed to do and that he'd failed.

The mugshots in the Prophet were painful to look at. His cheeks had sunken in, usually pristine face now clouded with scruffy hair. For the first time, I was looking at my father unshaven, unhinged, and behind his usually cold and lifeless blue eyes I saw real fear, the same fear I imagined he caused in me. And it wasn't just that I saw this, but everyone else did. What little reign of terror I had exacted on the school was now over the second everyone saw my father's frightened, bandaged face plastered all over The Prophet. And once Umbridge was definitely out of the picture, no one took me seriously and instead paid me kindly and dearly for all that I'd done to them.

"You think you deserved to be made fun of because your father was put in Azkaban?" Petra asked.

My shoulders sunk along with my head as I bent over in the chair.

"I... I don't know. I just know that maybe if I hadn't been such a massive prat to everyone, they would have had some sort of pity for me, instead of hating me," I said.

"No one deserves to be harassed, especially during a difficult time when they're father's been locked in prison, especially one so inhumane as Azkaban. Even if you did harass others, that doesn't make you deserving of harassment yourself."

I knew it was true, but there was something stubborn about my brain that kept insisting that I had deserved my treatment. Instead of trying to grapple with it, I thanked Petra and continued on.

Given the circumstances, Dumbledore gave me permission to excuse myself from the short summer term, and I came home almost immediately after the incident. While I had usually apparated or Floo'ed into the Manor, my mother gave me specific instructions to wait at the doorstep of Borgin and Burkes after catching the train to King's Cross. The summer months meant nothing in England as I shivered in the alleyway. I jumped when the door behind me opened and Borgin popped out, commenting about how I was a sad little lamb, lost all alone. I wanted to run away, but my mother had told me to wait in that spot without any instructions about when she would be coming. 

"You poor lost little pretty," he commented, coming closer towards me, extending one of his long, bony fingers.

"Get your fucking hands off me!" I shouted, slapping his hand away quickly. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up and I winced, waiting for the inevitable strikes I thought would come.

"Draco," my mother said plainly behind me and Borgin scuttled back into the shop like a spider in a rainstorm.

We apparated to an area outside of the Manor that I barely recognised. There was little time to ask my mother what was happening or why before she ushered me towards a black carriage being tugged by a black horse, driven by a fat, rat-looking man with a silver arm who kept grinning at me like a cat stalking it's prey. I hesitated before I pushed myself up into the carriage to look at my mother's face. She was looking in the distance, away from my face. Her eyes looked brimmed with water and her throat tight. She pushed me in when I stopped and followed shortly behind me.

I collapsed onto the seat, nearly tripping on black cloth lying on the floor of the carriage. I followed the cloth up as I sat up correctly. I watched it wind up a skeletal frame before I met the pale, pasty blue looking skin, a horrible face with red eyes that made me feel like a target board. The rat bastard cracked his gruesome smile and folded his thin, bony hands on his lap.

 _"Draco_ ," he crooned, " _What a pleasure to see you... Haven't you grown in these passing years. Grown hopefully into the man your father isn't._ "

I sat frozen in the corner of the carriage, trying to clutch the upholstery below me. Maybe if I sat completely and utterly still, he would lose interest like some sort of rabid wild animal and walk away.

"Answer him," my mother whispered harshly as she sat next to me, her voice sounding on the verge of breaking.

"Y-yes," I said plainly. My mouth felt dry. 

" _Your father may not have told you this, but your mother has been so kind as to permit me and some of my associates to stay in the Manor for the time being. With Lucius in Azkaban, I'm sure you all appreciate the comfort of added company._ "

My mother gave one of her classic fake smiles and nodded. She gave me a glare and I nodded quickly as well.

" _Lucius' sudden departure also means that there's a bit of work to be done, and your mother was just telling me how much of an excellent, aspiring wizard you are._ "

"Yes," I said, not skipping a beat. I didn't answer because I wanted the job, but because I didn't want my mother to have to speak. I tried not to stare at her by my side, but I could feel the tense-ness radiating off of her.

The Manor had always been a cold place, but I had never imagined it possible to be even more cold than when I stepped through the doors. My back tensed and never released when he put his hand on it, ushering me inside the house. When I had got on the train from Hogwarts earlier that day, I imagined I'd fill the summer with a few Quiddich lessons, some studying, but mostly lounging around the Manor, unless my mother decided on a vacation to take her mind off my father. Mostly, I didn't want to think of him in Azkaban, but with a horde of Death Eaters sitting in almost every room in my house I could find my way to, there was no way of getting out of thinking of him sitting, rotting in a cell.

The Carrows had grinned widely at me when the rat bastard announced to everyone over a grand dining table during dinner that I had an important task. It felt like a bad joke that no one would cop to and I could have sworn I saw a few people snickering in their goblets after the announcement was made. My summer was filled with a strict training regime in the Dark Arts and strategy sessions with him and the Death Eaters on how to best go about performing my task. At first, it didn't seem real. I almost laughed at the idea at times when I was sitting alone in my room, trying to come up with ideas. It was such a preposterous idea and everyone knew it. The only one seemingly not sold on the joke was that rat bastard. Everyone else took to making comments like "Dead man walking" every time I crossed the doorway of wherever they were sitting. My mother could barely look at my face.

As the school year drew nearer, the tension in my back doubled and our studies intensified. I had been practising some basic curses, but almost everything I had cast was considerably weaker than the rat bastard wanted. Something about his seedy eyes told me he sensed that my heart wasn't in it. Snape had taken to watching our sessions, claiming that he could help me continue to prepare when I began the new school year. 

" _Today_ ," the rat bastard began, " _we're going to try something very different Draco. Something to test your will."_

He twiddled my wand between his fingers and I heard some muffled noise coming from the tall, ominous cabinet I'd been introduced to towards half of the summer. They briefed me on their plan, but I hadn't been able to get a grasp of the Cabinet just yet, probably for the same reasons I couldn't quite get a grasp on anything that they'd try to teach me. When he swung open the door, a body bound in what looked like black rope fell out of it, squirming on the ground and the muffled screams were louder. I flinched and looked immediately at Snape who looked down at the ground.

" _Today. We're going to practice the following._ "

He pointed a different wand towards the figure, red light jutting out of the end. Whoever was bound howled and squirmed harder. It wasn't difficult to figure out what we were practising. My breath felt short all of a sudden.

" _Now. Your turn,"_ he said, passing me a familiar black wand to me.

"But... won't someone know..." I began to argue against my better judgement. I flinched at his piercing red look.

" _We have taken care of that. Just do it._ "

I looked down at the figure, still trying to escape whatever bonds held them and I felt the wand loose in my hand. I looked at Snape again, but he wouldn't catch my gaze. Swallowing loudly, I tried to get a better grip on my wand.

"C-cruci-"

" _C-C-C-C-CRUCIO?!"_ he screamed so loud, it echoed almost five times louder.

I tried to steady my breath, raising my wand hand again. My voice was weak and squeaky when I spoke.

"Cruci-"

In one swift movement, he smacked my hand hard, forcing me to drop the wand, and shoved me backwards before I could think, slamming the door to the Vanishing Cabinet behind me. I stumbled off of the floor, feeling around in the dark for a handle, my wand, or anything I could touch, but my hands only met the smoothed walls. After a few minutes of frantic searching a loud bang echoed on the side of the wall and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

The door swung open quickly as the ground tilted. I found myself nearly falling out of the Cabinet, which lay sideways near the precipice edge of a cliff overlooking a tumultuous ocean. My clothes squeaked under me as I slipped out, grabbing the edge of the cabinet before completely falling into the abyss. I screamed as the wind howled and pelted rain down on my head, soaking through my cloak. A gust of what felt like wind shoved me back into the Cabinet, banging my head against the side of the wall. My vision went black.

When I woke up, my entire body was covered in a sheen of sweat and it was still dark. I felt around the floor, still feeling the walls of the Cabinet around me. The ground felt cool under my fingertips. As they brushed past the sides of the cabinet, I yelped in pain. The sides of the cabinet where red-hot and when I stumbled backwards and fell, the side of my face hit another molten part and I screamed again. My breathing slowed when I finally stood dead centre in the Cabinet, avoiding any walls, feeling my sweat now soaking through my shirt. 

The air felt thick under my lungs. The door swung open suddenly and I saw nothing but fire. The light made me squint as I backed up slightly, still trying to avoid being burned. My breath quickened as I tried to see through the flames which seemed to stay outside of the cabinet. The ceiling of whatever building I was in was slowly dripping like the wax of a candle and the hot gusts from the fire where pushing against my face. Some of the smoke drifted in as I began started to cough, trying to cover my mouth with my forearm. I felt light-headed as more of the smoke drifted in and I stood there wandless, helpless, not having any idea what I should do. I shouted for my mother, but no response came. 

The door snapped shut and the temperature dropped. A particularly strong coughing fit took me and I doubled over, leaning against the back wall and trying to catch my breath. Flying open again, I found myself kicked by wind, falling out of the Cabinet face first onto the cold Manor floor, still coughing. I looked up as I coughed, and everyone else looked back at me. All of the Death Eaters and the rat bastard. The only people not looking were Snape and my mother. He stormed towards me from his chair and flicked whatever wand he held. I felt a level of pain I'd not yet experience course through the veins starting my neck and pulsing down my body. I screamed and folded my body in two to try and stop it from going back and forth down my back and up through my stomach. I heard someone shout and the pain stopped. A burly wizard lifted me off the ground and threw me back in the Cabinet. 

I lay there for longer than I could count, but if the meals I were given in between the random bouts of nearly falling out into the ocean, nearly dying in a fire, and nearly being thrown into a windy storm, were any indication, I spent three days in the Vanishing Cabinet. On the fourth day, I got thrown out just as I had on the first, lying on the cold Manor floor in front of everyone. At first I just lay there, waiting for the inevitable curse to wrack it's way through my body again. But after a few moments, I slowly stood at my feet.

He approached me, smiling from ear to ear, passing a wand in my hand. This time, no one was around except Snape lurking in a corner. He waved his hand towards a table where a bird stood, chirping happily. When the bird took off to fly, it ran into some sort of invisible barrier and fluttered back down to the table. He didn't have to say anything. I knew what he expected and I raised my wand.

The tiny bird made an awful noise as it contorted and twisted. I stood there frozen, wand still raised. At some point I was supposed to stop, but, like a kid riding their first broom, I had been so eager to jump on it, I did so before anyone had told me how to brake. After a few unbearable moments, it lay on it's back, unmoving, wings spread. I flinched when he walked up to me from behind and placed a cold, pointy hand on my back.

" _I'm very proud of you, Draco_."

My wand hand was still raised.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Content Note: Discussions of suicide, suicide attempt]

"You're angry," Petra said, looking me square in the eye.

I avoided looking at her like I had so many times before. I could feel the fuming in the hairs of my own nostrils, the way my fists clenched and my jaw squared, all of the telltale signs of anger. With a mental hand, I smoothed the wrinkles forming across my forehead and straightened my grimace like I had practised and done so many times years and years before. It was tiring to constantly try and dissolve my anger, sometimes nearly impossible. It was like trying to melt ice with a bucket of cold water. Maybe it did melt eventually, but that was usually on it's own, rather than because of my help. 

My shoulders sunk. "Yeah," I admitted, "I'm angry."

"It's perfectly understandable to feel angry under the circumstances," Petra said plainly, though her eyes conveyed the same sense of pity- but not pity. Pity wasn't the right word. Pity meant that Petra thought she was better than me in some way, but Petra never thought that, not for a second. It wasn't pity in the slightest. It was more like her eyes were trying to reach out and brush my cheek, to give me some form of contact so I could physically understand that I wasn't alone.

I understood what "perfectly understandable" meant in the literal sense. My brain had worked it out and somewhere it told me in a cold, hard voice that all of the things I felt were "perfectly understandable" and therefore okay. It gave me tacit permission to feel my ears grow warm and my muscles tense, but somewhere another voice told me to straighten up, to wipe away the tenseness and never express the secret that was my anger. Because, after all, how could I ever be upset with my own mother, who betrayed the rat bastard himself just to find my whereabouts? She eventually contributed to the result that would lead to the demise of one of the most powerful wizards in the century. Even Potter himself gave her credit for it.

But somewhere in my chest, I felt sick. For all of the two seconds she spent betraying the rat bastard, I knew it never made up for the hours she left me alone with him and that Vanishing Cabinet, for all of her silence when I was elected to perform what everyone knew was an impossible garish task, for her willingness to play along in giving me an opal necklace and trying to show me how to charm it. She knew it all along and she said nothing. I knew that it wasn't necessarily happy compliance, but part of me didn't care. I was supposed to feel thankful that she managed to lie to one of the most evil wizards the world had seen for two seconds after she spent most of her life and mine going along with his every whim.

I snapped back into it when Petra placed her hand familiarly on my own. Obviously there wasn't much contact allowed between us professionally, but occasionally I needed something like that to bring me back into the real world, and I appreciated Petra for it.

"I know it's okay for me to be angry, but part of me still doesn't want to let go of the fact that she did help me and I have to be grateful for it. I know that it was one time out of all of the times when she could have helped me, but I have this nagging idea that to be angry at her means... I don't know. Hating her completely."

"There's also the small matter of the Vow."

Even while everyone thought my task was a hilarious joke, resisting attempts to train me was ultimately futile. I only put up one more fight after he tortured me with the Vanishing Cabinet, and I received much the same treatment as before. Something in me broke and I started doing everything he wished, which inevitably made the skills he taught me sink in. Although my magic never came close to the power that he wielded, because I felt no inner desire and passion to cause harm, the resistance I had before to causing damage had vanished, so that the only thing left was compliance. If I hadn't known better, I'd think I was under the Imperius curse, and for a short time at the beginning, I thought I was. Until one morning when he got bored with the way I moved a wand, he decided I'd enjoy the day better if I spent it following him constantly and barking like a dog.

But nothing stoked my fire in the cause more when I overheard a conversation between Aunt Bellatrix and another Death Eater, who was concerned that such a very important mission would be given to a clearly pathetic child. My guess was that they'd finally been briefed on how the Vanishing Cabinet would be used, as soon as I was able to master it, which hadn't yet happened. The Death Eater groaned at having to practice skirmishes and curses for an eventual duel he knew would never happen.

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about all that," Bellatrix said, the familiar zest behind her eyes, "It's all been taken care of, the plan."

"You seriously think that pathetic whimp will be able to go through with it?"

"No, don't be ridiculous," she laughed, "I have every faith in the Dark Lord but unfortunately who he aligns his faith with sometimes concerns me. In this case, Cissy has managed to kill two birds with one stone. Snape's taken an Unbreakable Vow to ensure that if Draco isn't up to snuff, he'll handle the task himself."

"Snape? Why are you so happy then? Don't you think Snape a traitor?"

"Yes," Bellatrix said darkly, "But my guess is that, as we all suspect, Draco will not be able to complete his task. He'll faulter. And Snape will have to step in. And if the old bag doesn't die than Snape does. I doubt very seriously he would ever harm an innocent little boy like Draco. So either we finally get rid of the old miser or we get rid of a potential traitor. Either way, it's a win for us. So quit your complaining and keep working!"

She enthusiastically prodded her wand into the shoulder of the Death Eater, who backed up against the wall.

I stepped away from the cracked door before either of them could hear me, the familiar feeling of burning rage behind my ears. No one had faith in me. Not my mother, not my aunt, not any Death Eater in the entire house. I saw an image of myself within my own mind, haggard and rough just like my father rotting in a cell in Azkaban. He at least had the chance to try before everyone decided he wasn't worth anything, and I was different, wasn't I? That was the moment I decided to try and give it my all, to actually commit to everything the rat bastard wanted me to do and become the monster he'd intended me to be. Because being a monster had to be better than being a pathetic whimp. And I was going to do it all on my own, without anyone else's help.

"Don't you think they're connected?" Petra noted.

"What's connected?"

"Well, you have such a hard time feeling all of this anger for your mother because she never appeared to help you, except in one convenient case, but I think it's a lot more than that. You know that when your mother made the Unbreakable Vow with Snape that she was doing the best she could to try and help you. That both of them were actually doing the best they could to try and help you, but none of it could be public in any way. Instead of helping you outright by just telling you what you needed to know, they did everything in the background where you couldn't see what was happening and that made you feel even more alone and even less likely to accept anyone's help, even when it was offered to you many times, even when you needed it."

For the last few weeks of my training, I improved significantly. The rat bastard bared his rotted teeth at every turn, fawning over how proud he was of my accelerated improvement. Some of the Death Eaters jeered at me less as I walked around the Manor, and I finally felt able to command some of the basic respect most people got by just walking around. With the bastard's support, my presence began to strike some hesitance and fear into some of the Death Eaters and like a drowned animal finally breaking it's head into the open air, I breathed it all in heavily. I intimidated everyone I could at every turn, including that disgusting old geezer in Borgin and Burkes. I began looking and acting more and more like my father every day.

With my eyes set on the prize, I began thinking about all of the ways I could get to Dumbledore. I started plotting independently, imagining myself standing over his body in front of all of the Death Eaters, especially the Carrows, who ever dared to make me flinch. If I could kill one of the most powerful wizards in the world, they had reason to be afraid.

But I knew from observation that if I made my attempts too obvious, it wouldn't be long before Potter came sniffing. Unlike previous years where I tried to keep Potter's image away from my thoughts and chats, I re-imagined all of my plans with Potter-proof approaches. My vigilance paid off on the first day I finally returned to the school and caught Potter snooping around in the train carriage. When I sent word back to the headquarters I used to call home of my success at foiling Potter's interloping plans, I received encouragement and praise directly from the evil bastard himself. While in the past I might have been blamed and beaten for the missed opportunity to finally take care of the Potter problem, I had anticipated the bastard's ridiculous need for a one on one conflict with Potter and knew that if I declared confidently that I at least gave Potter his just desserts for messing around, I'd earn the respect I wanted. 

Snape saw right through my overbearing confidence however and didn't show a single sign of intimidation or fear that the other Death Eaters had shown. At first, his heartfelt requests to assist me with my task appealed to me at first. The reality of the situation had a tendency to smack me upside my overgrown head, making me realise that I was really a tiny little boy going up against one of the greatest wizards for generations. I needed some help, and I knew it, but a couple of seconds lingering on Snape's face made me remember my mother's Vow, the fact that no one seemed to have the slightest confidence in me, and the fact that Snape was inches away from claiming the only spotlight of glory in my life I ever had a chance of bathing in.

As Aunt Bellatrix had grown jealous of Snape's confidence with the rat bastard, I had as well. I didn't care if he was a traitor, just that he was going to steal my one chance at redemption. A rotting voice in my chest echoed every time he extended his hand in assistance, reminding me that if I didn't have the strength to kill Dumbledore, I would never be respected by any of the Death Eaters again. 

And what if they won? Could I expect my mother or my father to stand up for me in a new society run by the rat bastard who spent the better part of weeks torturing me? No. My life would probably become a mixture of Vanishing Cabinet torture or becoming his new Imperio'ed human puppet. So I rebuked Snape's assistance with increasing harshness at every turn. Word must have got back to the rat bastard of how confident and capable I felt I was, and as the year drew on, the once notes of instilling confidence became death threats. 

I spent hours in the Room of Requirement, doing my best to practice the Vanishing Cabinet spell. Try after try, I just got dead birds. I threw them in a large nearby vase after the first couple, but on the third attempt it snapped shut viciously and hopped away, a thin but effective and roaring fireplace suddenly erecting next to me as a clear sign of what I was to do. The birds stacked into the fireplace as the letters from headquarters grew harsher and harsher. Finally, on one morning, I creaked open the wooden door and a bird shot out quickly, whizzing itself into the air. I smiled until it took a nosedive toward my face, pecking madly at my hands. I grabbed my wand quickly and threw it into the flames with the other birds, blood dripping off my hands from the wounds. I never forgot the sound of it howling and chirping as the fire engulfed it's face.

I avoided the Room of Requirement and the Vanishing Cabinet for ages after that. I knew the spell worked. I knew it was my time to work out the final plan, since both of my poisoning ideas had failed. What little respect I had managed to gain during the last couple of weeks of the summer was all but lost, the final shred of human dignity was resting on the balance of me being able to kill someone the rat bastard himself could barely best. All of the confidence and intimidation I'd built up sunk like a wrecked boat in the sea.

Snape wasn't a fool and had learned when his assistance wasn't needed. Looking back now, I know I could have reached out for him to help, but at the time I was sure, based on his colder than usual approach to me in classes, that he would never let me hear the end of it if I did ask for help. During a particularly difficult lesson, I had managed to mix two potions ingredients thanks to my poor labelling, a mistake that earned me an excessive humiliation by Snape in front of the entire class. His cold stare towards me as I hastily packed up my potions equipment felt like the seal on my Death Certificate. With no one to help me officially now, I headed toward the bathroom to think.

It was as cold as the Manor and when I looked in the mirror, I felt like my face had aged years in a short span of time. Not wanting to look, I slunk myself on the floor, my bag falling beside me. A small bottle rolled out from underneath the brown flap of my bag, tinkling across the floor like a wind chime. I reached over and grabbed it, pulling it to my face and peeling back the label I stuck on it. Five Xs were drawn across the label, traced over many times in black ink. It was the poison I'd managed to procure for drinks or anything else I could find that would eventually make it's way to Dumbeldore.

I nearly threw it down in frustration when I remembered how easy it would have been if Dobby had still been in my family and how easily it would have been to past the task down to him. I thought for a moment about trying to ask Dobby for his help, but I knew he wouldn't waste a second blabbing his mouth to Potter, who had already spent most of his year skulking after me in the corridors. It was difficult enough to keep him out of the Room of Requirement. And if I sold myself over to Dumbledore, I'm sure the rat bastard would have me killed on sight. 

I popped the cork of the bottle and looked at the smooth edge. There wasn't a single chip in the glass, even from rattling around my bag, no chance that I would regret placing my lips on it and tilting it back in my mouth. There was no other way to back out of this that wouldn't get Snape or Dumbeldore killed. One of them had to die, if Unbreakable Vows had any power. At that moment, looking at the bottle, I realised despite what a pompous arse I'd become since the beginning of the year, I didn't really want anyone to die. Not the burning birds, not Snape, not Dumbeldore, and not even my pathetic self. But my options were growing increasingly thin. And my measly life seemed worth losing in comparison to the likes of two of the greatest wizards I knew who hadn't tortured me for hours. I put the smooth lid against my lips and felt it's coolness.

"Stop" a tiny voice said, making me jump. The bottle slipped out of my hands and fell to the floor, spilling most of the contents onto the stone. I cursed and picked it up, at first attempting to spoon the liquid back into the flask before I realised it was decidedly unwise to attempt to touch it. 

"Look what you made me do!" I howled towards no one in particular. I watched as the liquid steamed and dissipated into the air and realised I had no other option, other than trying to cast the Killing Curse on myself, for a short, swift exit from my circumstances. I collapsed back onto my knees, dropping the bottle on the ground and allowing the rest of the liquid out. I rubbed my eyes in anticipation of the tears that eventually came flowing as a small, translucent figure appeared just as the last of the liquid vanished.

"I'm sorry," Moaning Myrtle said and for the first time in her death and all the words I ever heard her speak, she sounded sincere.

"Why did you do that?" I said, mostly to myself.

"You don't want to do that," she said plainly, without a whine or an upset pitch, "Believe me. It's not worth it."

"And how would you--" I began angrily before I looked up at her face and saw right through it.

"Oh, I would know," she said, "Believe me. I would know."

A thick pause emanated through the air, punctuated by my occasionally sharp intakes of breaths between sobs. Normally, I didn't want anyone to see me in this sort of state, but there was something about Myrtle that made me not care. After a few moments, she sat as best she could beside me, trying to look in my eyes.

"I wasn't always like this, you know?" she whispered, "I used to be happy."

Myrtle explained in short order that, despite the constant teasing she got from everyone, her mood was more in line with Fred and George Weasley than her current state. Or at least, that's how she started out. When both of her parents passed away in a car accident, she sunk into a deep depression, but refused to tell anyone at Hogwarts what had happened. They assumed that the constant bullying made her mopey and sad, but it was the memory of her parents' death that was too painful.

She didn't dare mention it, afraid she might have to explain the finer details of how a car could find itself mowed over by a large freighter truck in a highway when a driver is much to sleepy. On the night Myrtle was killed, she sunk into the bathroom after a bit of light teasing. Sitting in the bathroom stall, she beat herself up when no one else was, chastising herself for caring so much what everyone else thought of her glasses. Just before the basilisk had passed it's eyes over her, she'd thought at that moment, she wanted nothing more than to be dead with her own parents. It was a brief thought, a fleeting moment she never had before, but it was enough as her heart stopped, looking into the yellow eyes. The irony was that since her death, death was all she could think about.

Somehow, even as a ghost, she could still cry. I saw the tears brimming in her eyes. She hadn't told anyone about her parents still, devastated that she hadn't actually joined them in death and stood stuck in the same halls she was teased in for years. She'd led everyone to believe that she was just a whining ghost, but the reality of the situation was that she had every reason to moan. I felt gooseflesh rise across my arm as she reached out her hand to touch me.

"I always thought it was my fault," she said, "That I'd brought the basilisk on with my own thoughts. That I was to blame."

My own tears had ceased awhile ago.

"You didn't," I said, staring at the hard cold ground, "You didn't ask for this. No one does." I tried to reach out to brush a tear that was falling from her cheek, but my hand went right through her face. She didn't flinch, but didn't seem to mind either.

"Even when life seems like a curse," Myrtle continued, looking at me, "Like it's living death itself, it isn't. Trust me. I am the way I am because I want to live. Because in life, not all things are set in stone. Not all things are cold. There is still warmth. There is still a possibility for change. There is still hope. And sometimes it's as difficult to see as a ghost. But it's still there. Maybe now you're still clinging onto to that hope. But believe me when I say, that it's better to cling on to an invisible hope than to cling on to life itself."

Petra broke her professional veneer, stepping out of her chair and reaching across to pull me into a tight hug. I froze instinctually, completely unprepared. But after a moment, I felt my muscles relax without force and found myself embracing Petra back. After a moment of silence, Petra spoke.

"I'm so proud of you, Draco."


	9. Chapter 9

I still remember the look of her eyes as she emerged from the Vanishing Cabinet. Aunt Bellatrix examined me once over like I had stolen something of hers. My hand trembled slightly on the handle of the cabinet door and I immediately looked down. Snape hadn't told her, I'd hoped. It must've been as shameful for him as it would be for me. Potter getting ahold of his own book and using one of his spells had to be as worse as the fact that he bested me. One month before I finally let them into the castle, one month before I was to go up against one of the greatest wizards in the world, and I couldn't even beat Potter in a simple duel. But I guess the real truth was that the rat bastard couldn't either. And wasn't that why we were all there in the first place?

"That's when everything changed," I said, "I thought my father being home from Azkaban would mean something, as it had before. But really, this was worse."

"But let's go back to that moment, Draco. I know you don't like talking about it. But if you think about it, that probably connects to what you said happened during the last chapter of your Auror training, and the incidents you've had."

One of the final legs of Auror training, if you choose, is to practice the Unforgiveables. Some individuals declined, citing religious differences, past struggles with the Curses, personal beliefs, and other issues. At first, I had no idea what I should do, but I felt the unmistakable glare of the individuals in my training program on my back. Everyone expected me to go through with it. They already didn't want me in the Auror training, felt that I bought my way in or threatened someone. If I decided to back down, people would say I wasn't possibly prepared. But I worried that a willingness to participate might somehow demonstrate some sort of bloodlust on my part. I didn't want to do it, but part of me felt I should. Not for the sake of impressing anyone, but just because I honestly felt it would make me a better Auror.

The whispers during the classes began. Mutterings about how I must've casted these spells a million times during my reign as a traitor, how I must've seen and clapped as the rat bastard murdered who he wished; the truth being actually that no matter how many times I did see the bastard cast the curse, each time smacked me in the gut with a cold, hard brick. There was something about the air that changed whenever it was cast, almost like a smell you could never identify. It felt like you could see something if you tried hard enough, like the world was dripped in syrup for half a second that froze time but made it dry as bone. As I stood in the class in my special corner, an animated wooden figure danced across a table, oblivious to the tip of my wand pointed directly at it's head and what was coming.

It felt like the lights of the room blinked and I was standing again on the Astronomy Tower, trying to focus my vision on Dumbledore's hair, his nose, anything but the honest eyes that looked back at me. I spooned the rage I felt for how he focused so much on Potter, helped him with every problem while abandoning me, provided him with something I never had because apparently everyone assumes that having a father present is somehow better for you than not having one at all. Disarming was easy enough, but my mind went blank when I thought of what to cast next. I didn't want to say the words and I kept blinking to get the tears out of my eyes. Like I had so many times in my life, I wanted to trade places with Potter and I would have given anything for it. To have people to confide in, friends who stay by your side (really, not just because of who you're related to and the amount of money your family has) and best of all, someone to guide you and talk to you when you feel afraid that some evil bastard is bent on your complete destruction. The crucial difference between the two of us being that I would never become a Boy Who Lived. I had no one to protect me in that moment. And who would protect someone as rotten as me? 

I backed up further and further, closer to the edge of the Tower. I was just a pathetic little whimp anyway, right? Why not make it look like I fell off of the edge? The Vow would be irrelevant. No one would have to die but me. No one would protect me, so perhaps this was the only way I could protect myself.

"But you did have someone who came to protect you, didn't you?"

It happened every time. In Auror training. Out in the field. Just before the moment that I was set to do some damage to someone, in a moment where an Unforgiveable might actually be my only defence, if I had to do anything more than disarm, I froze instantly. I was waiting for someone to step in and change it, someone to finally show up just before I was about to give up hope. But obviously, Snape wasn't there to step in before someone escaped or hit me with a countercurse and freezing up had nearly cost me my life on many occasions. I lost the leads I had on many criminals thanks to it.

"It makes sense that you would freeze in these situations Draco. Almost every single time you've been around that curse, it's been coupled with some intense humiliation and a threat on your own life. Voldemort didn't just murder Charity in front of you for the kick of it. He did it to send a message to you and everyone at that table, that it could happen to you too. It's not just the moments you spent on the Tower and what you saw there."

After Snape stepped in, something changed about Dumbledore's face that I couldn't explain. He wasn't scared. He didn't flinch. He didn't look surprised. I couldn't turn to see Snape's face, but my eyes for the first time that night stood locked on Dumbledore's. I saw the sincerity there when he finally spoke. That's when I finally realised that this was supposed to happen, whether by my hand or by Snape's. I could finally see who's side Snape was really on, even if no one else could.

"I want you to focus on that," Petra said, "And remember that feeling. You've dealt with so much on your own, Draco. This was something that meant something to you. You were finally not alone. And yes, the shock of seeing the Killing Curse may have caused you to freeze up and I wouldn't doubt that's what's made you feel sick when you saw your fellow Auror trainees use it. But I think really, what causes you to freeze up before you cast anything is this feeling which you're having so much trouble feeling right now. You have the entire Ministry breathing down your neck, everyone glancing sideways at you… you feel just alone now as you did when you were a child. You've always felt alone, even with friends. But in that moment, you realised that you weren't alone. And that's a powerful revelation."

I nodded. 

It was at that point, after Snape dragged me away from the Tower that I realised where I had to stand, because I definitely wasn't alone. I hoped things would change when my father returned from Azkaban, but he remained silent, haggard, beaten down and for the first time in a long time, his desiccated appearance didn't cause a lump in my throat. I wanted to see him crumble, not because I was angry with him but because I knew he had to crumble. He had to get where I was, ready to jump off of a tower before he'd complete another one of the bastard's orders. He had to get there before he'd make the decision almost everyone avoided making. I doubt very many people were actually with the bastard. They were just where I was, getting close to the edge and wondering if they were going to do it, or if they were going to jump. Sometimes I wondered, due to the general incompetence of most of his team, if half of them messed up in hopes he'd put them out of their misery. I wanted my father to break so he would realise that there was only one choice he had to make: rebel or die.

Petra smiled. "I think you should stop for a moment and realise the monumental thing you did, Draco. You decided to go against him before any of your family did. You didn't have to get thrown into Azakaban to realise that. And he could have killed you at any moment, but you rebelled in the only way that you could. In the biggest way that you could. And you may have saved the day just as much as your mother did."

My heart had sunk down to my feet when I recognised Potter in the Manor, face swollen. I had no idea why they bothered to have me check. Who else would be running around with Weasley and Granger other than Potter? It didn't really take a genus to figure that out and my parents did instantly, but I cast as much doubt as I could. I thought for sure denying it outright might make them start asking too many questions, like how I was so sure, so I tried to pretend like I was just that same useless whimp everyone thought I was. When Aunt Bellatrix interrupted the party, I felt somewhat relieved that no one was talking about calling the bastard, but it wasn't long before Granger's screams had me running to the furthest wing of the house to get away.

I slunk into an extra study, habitually throwing open the door of an old dumbwaiter that barely anyone ever used. While the little use wizards had for something like a dumbwaiter seemed obvious, the truth was that some of our older family were so snobbish they never even wanted to so much as see a house elf, and having the elves send up food using the dumbwaiter was a good alternative, even if it was a muggle one, to seeing a lowly elf. I saw a vision of myself running towards the study as a child, my father shouting for me down the halls. Without thinking, I jumped into the dumbwaiter, and wheeled myself as fast as I could to the bottom. I would have been terrified of the dark if the bottom had been dark, but a small light shone through the wood. I shoved open the door and found Dobby sitting next to a lamp, reading over a book he instantly dropped at the sight of me.

"What are you doing?" I innocently asked, peering around what looked like a dark part of a space below some floorboards. As I looked up, I noticed the bottom level of the dumbwaiter had been kicked out so it would reach even deeper down to this crawlspace filled with just a lantern, piles of books, and a shaking house elf.

"Please!" Dobby begged in harsh whispers, "You mustn't tell anyone."

"Were you… reading?"

I had never heard of a house elf reading in my entire life. My old ignorant self had probably doubted they ever could. There's probably not any law against it, but it was just unheard of. Between duties, how would house elves find the time to read? And even if they could read, surely they would only read as it related to their duties. I'd never heard of an elf daring to read on their own. I squinted to see what book Dobby cradled in his arms and the lantern reflected two words before he had the time to tuck it away. Those words were "slave" and "rebellion".

"What are you reading about? Rebelling, are you?" my angry, young ignorant self demanded. "You just wait until my father hears about this. This'll make him far more angry than I have."

I began to shuffle back in the dumbwaiter when Dobby tugged on my sleeve, eyes brimming with tears. "Please Master Draco. Please don't tell. Please." Both he and I knew if my father knew about Dobby reading, he would give Dobby a direct order to never read again - something he couldn't get around or disobey.

I grinned. "What will you do for me, house elf?"

"Dobby," he said, correcting me before remembering his supposed place and flinching. I advanced on him, towering myself over the only thing smaller and more helpless than I was.

"What will you do for me then… Dobby?"

"Whatever Master w-wishes."

I thought for a moment. What I wanted more than anything at the time was a one way ticket out of the Manor, and I knew Dobby could give me that. I only needed to prepare myself. In my youth, I foolishly thought I could convince my mother to come with me. We could escape together, leaving my father behind.

"I want a way out," I said, "Dobby will promise to Draco Malfoy that on one occasion, when Draco calls on Dobby, no matter who he is in service to and what his orders are, that he must secure safe passage out of the Manor for who Draco names. Once and only once. And Dobby must do this at all costs. Even if it means Dobby's life."

"Dobby promises."

I kicked myself. When I couldn't convince my mother, I had given up all hope of leaving the Manor and as the years passed, I had forgotten all about the promise Dobby had made. Barely fitting inside the dumbwaiter, I wheeled myself to the dark bottom. I could still hear some of the echoes of Grangers screams.

"Dobby. I'm calling you to fulfil your promise," I said quietly and to myself. 

A pop echoed outside of the door and after a moment a familiar light shone through the wooden door. I ripped it open and saw the mournful look in Dobby's eyes.

"Dobby," I said without hesitation, "Harry Potter is in the basement. Secure safe passage for Potter out of the Manor and anyone else who's with him…. including Granger."

My mouth went dry. Dobby's face changed from hesitant to resolute and he nodded before disappearing with a loud crack. I sat for a long time at the bottom of the dumbwaiter until the light of the lantern faded, trying to argue against the voices in my head that told me I had sent the only one who could possibly get me out of the Manor at this point to his death. I wasted my last chance, my last wish, my last ticket, my last hope. I could have ordered safe passage for myself into some Bavarian town. But I knew I'd never get anywhere alone and I couldn't do anything to fight. I had to be like Snape and do my fighting in the only way I knew how, even if it meant watching as others died. I never believed for a second that Dobby could have completed that mission. Even with house elf powers, I knew that against a team of Death Eaters, he would be lucky to escape. And, as I found out later, I wasn't wrong.

I slunk my face into my hands in front of Petra just as I had in front of the dimming lamp in the basement and I cried.


	10. Chapter 10

With over twenty fireplaces in our mansion, it wouldn't surprise anyone to hear that my parents preferred the Floo Network to brooms when they couldn't otherwise apparate. The Floo was also preferred any time they had to travel with me and every time I travelled, I took advantage of the time to clutch my parents' hands as hard as I could, not just because the entire process terrified me, but because that's the moment I could grab ahold of their hands without fear of repercussions. But every single time I squinted my eyes shut and pretended I shouldn't be there. Even now, I avoid travelling by Floo if I can help it.

The very first time I had seen my father go up in flames, I was so small I remember it in only small glimpses and pictures, but my mother told me after I saw him disappear, I cried until my father came back to scold me for my ridiculous behaviour. My mother avoided using the Floo with me for as long as she could, but there came a point when we could no longer avoid it. A small attempt to ease my inevitable blow out, my mother had me take my first Floo trip while I slept. My father shouting our destination, snapped me awake and as I opened my eyes, I saw flames engulf us and I screamed. 

When we arrived at our destination, my mother couldn't console me and I had, like anyone would expect a small child terrified beyond their faculties might do, wet myself and my mother as well. My father looked in a way I would never forget; it was a face of complete and utter disgust.

"And that's where it began," Petra interrupted. We'd deconstructed almost everything about how Auror training affected me.

"Yeah," I said, more ready to reveal aspects of my past without the same fidgeting and feeling in the pit of my stomach that I usually felt.

There are changes that we see in ourselves that seem incredibly obvious. When we buy new clothes or when we get our hair cut, we see it all right away. But there are other things, like when our hair slowly grows out or our clothes slowly get washed out from repeated use, that we don't notice and those those around us don't really notice until something jogs our senses or until we meet someone that hasn't seen us in a long time and then perhaps we might remember the way we used to be. That was how therapy with Petra was going. Things were changing about me, slowly but surely, but in a way that was not obvious to me right away. 

But as time went on and we discussed more and more the stories behind the panic, the meaning of the images in my nightmares, and everything that had gone on in my life that I never spoke to anyone about because I never had anyone to speak to them about shifted slowly. Earlier that week, when walking through Diagon Alley, I passed by a display of a new model of Rememberalls. I had always avoided them because of the multiple instances of pain that reflected back on me whenever I was near one. It didn't exactly make me feel horrible, but it didn't make me feel great either. But this time, as I strode through Diagon Alley, I didn't even see the display until I was right next to it, something that would have made me queasy and maybe even jump before apologising profusely to everyone around me and pretending I had seen something out of the corner of my eye. But this time... nothing. No sickness. No queasy feeling.

The memories were still there. And I saw them as I approached the display and picked up one of the balls in my hand. I could see everything as it had been as clear as day. The memories hadn't faded, but they no longer held the same power. Instead of feeling sick, I just felt a small sense of mourning. I put the ball down quickly as I felt my eyes water. 

When I pondered about my sessions with Petra, afterwards I always felt the powerful presence of nothingness and a loss of what might have been. For most of my life, I convinced myself that my life was normal, or at the very least that it was better than normal. My harsh upbringing had brought with it a thick skin that would protect me from the realities of life. In many ways, I saw myself as more capable than individuals around me, more capable at handling anything that came at me. That which didn't kill me, made me stronger. But the truth of it is, that's just something I told myself so I didn't have to face the real harsh reality of my life. The harsh reality being that I did not have a good childhood or a good upbringing. My father's abusiveness and my mother's negligence didn't help me in the end, it isolated me. It made it harder for me to trust that there were people in the world who could make me feel safe.

And that's important. I used to think before I met Petra and before I realised how important it was to fell safe, because I never felt safe, that the world was a horrible place and my father's willingness to be horrible helped assure that I could deal with the horribleness of the world. But no, that's not what a family should represent. If the world is so awful and horrible, shouldn't the one place where people are supposed to love you be a place you want to return to? Shouldn't those who love and care about you try their best to make sure what small amount of life you have on this planet is spent being happy rather than being sad? If we're all inevitably meant to live in a world that will drag us down, who is supposed to bring us back up again? And if I truly felt that it all made me stronger, why was I so jealous of Potter and all of the people who stood behind him?

"That's where it started... and the Vanishing Cabinet didn't help obviously but..." I paused.

"But?" Petra asked, "What's wrong, Draco?"

"I don't know if I'm ready to talk about it." It was the first time I had said that.

Petra looked at me for a moment before getting up quickly and shuffling around behind me in some of her cupboards. She pulled out what looked like a large bowl with some sort of liquid in it and placed it on the coffee table in the middle of the room. She motioned me to pull up my chair as she sat down next it it.

"I don't usually do this," she said after a pause, "But sometimes with some of my clients... especially the ones that have gone through a lot of things... that they find it easier to use this and it can help me understand where they're coming from. In fact, for some of my clients, the very act helps them process what they've been through. Do you want to try?"

"What is it?"

"Oh, sorry. It's a pensieve. It allows you to store and view your memories."

She then pulled out her wand and pointed it to her head. A small shiny thread of light came from her head as she withdrew it, and afterwards it floated towards the liquid and settled in. "That's one of my memories. Do you want to see it?"

I leaned over the bowl and nodded. "Go ahead. Put your face in the water."

The smell of beach air filtered through my lungs and I opened my eyes to the bright sunlight. The hard wood of the dock creaked below my feet and I saw the stone pebbled beach when I turned around. The fairground music and a faint smell of candyfloss wafted towards me after a moment, almost like the memory washed over me in layers. I saw a smaller looking version of who I thought was Petra, peering over the dock with wide, enchanted eyes. 

"Is that... a beach?" she asked in a small, squeaking voice. 

The voice of the response was garbled as the world collapsed around me quickly. I shut my eyes and felt water drops dripping off of my face and a rough terry towel shoved in my hands. I sputtered slightly, rubbing my face. As I opened my eyes, Petra looked at me.

"That was just a small memory, but as you can see, I can witness what happened."

I thought about it for a moment. "Are you sure you want to?"

Petra nodded. "I've seen a lot of things. And there's a backup." She felt around her neck for a silver chain, pulling out a small contraption that her shirt hid, "This will help me pull out of it, if it gets too much. But if you can't talk about it, then this might be the best option."

"Why didn't we do this from the beginning?" I sort of laughed to myself.

"Because," Petra said seriously, "Most of us can talk about difficult things. It's hard but it can't be done. But I know the look of someone who has something sitting on their mind that makes it very difficult. Sometimes too difficult. And when it's too difficult, just as it's probably been for a lot of things in most of your life, sometimes it's better to not say. You don't have to talk about it, if you don't want to. But knowing about it will help me understand. In the end though, it's up to you. You don't have to do this."

I nodded. "I think I want to."

Whether due to my excellent skills with spells that I'd worked so hard to improve or just how much I wanted to get the thought out of my head, I quickly learned how to deposit the memory in the pensieve. Unlike Petra's memory, mine was an ironic firey red thread that slowly came out of my mind and lit up the bowl as it connected with the water. I watched anxiously as Petra sunk her head slowly down, staring at the hand clutched around her necklace.

 

Petra found herself sitting in the cold dampness of Malfoy Manor amongst a table of cackling Death Eaters. Lucius barely stood, shaking towards the front of the table next to Voldemort who had slapped him on the shoulder, rocking him jovially like they were good friends. 

"I saw it, Lucius," he said coldly, "I saw it all. You were right to come to me. You and your wife remain valuable resources to me, as I can tell. But your son... needs to understand what consequences he will face if he continues down the path."

Looking over the table, Petra could barely see Narcissa stare wide-eyed toward Lucius who refused to meet her gaze. She had her arms on the table, almost as if she was ready to stand. 

"Bring him," Voldemort said, shoving Lucius from his side.

"Wait!" Narcissa yelped, standing quickly. Voldemort gave her a reproachful stare.

"You had something to say, Narcissa?"

She tapped her fingers along the table, looking down away from him. Her voice was barely audible as she said, "Just... that... perhaps, I could... take the punishment for my son? If-if it would please? Dark Lord?"

Voldemort smiled and shook his head slowly. "How incredibly generous of you Narcissa. But I'm afraid, the umbilical cord was cut a long, long time ago. It is time that Draco learns for himself what his choices will earn without the precious protection of his parents". He spat out the word parents as if it disgusted him, nearly shooting spit in Narcissa's face from across the room. "You've spoiled the boy," he berated so quickly it was hard to follow, "Spoiled him to the point of petulance. He now believes he can get everything he wants from mommy and daddy if he cries hard enough and he has to learn that sometimes there are no mommies and daddies. Sometimes there is no one there to help you but you. Sometimes... no matter how hard you cry, there will be no one who is there to help."

Petra jumped along with a few other Death Eaters, Narcissa, and Lucius when he howled Draco's name. He creeped in quickly from behind the hall where he'd been listening. Petra quickly guessed that this had been just before Voldemort had allowed Draco to go back to school, maybe even when he was supposed to be in school, both by the state of Lucius and the height and rings around Draco's eyes. He looked like he hadn't slept in days.

"Y-yes," he said under his breath after finally crawling down the stairs and standing near to the table. Voldemort didn't look up, but raised an arm quickly, catapulting Draco backwards and up into the sky. Petra fought the urge to cover her ears when she heard him cry out. His limbs extended out from his body, as if someone had them on individual ropes, before they snapped towards themselves, like someone had just tightened the ropes. He fought back, moving around in the air like a worm.

Voldemort looked at him steadily, floating him down over the table. Lucius had shuffled closer to the door, backing away into another room. Narcissa's bunched her hands in front of her, unable to move her gaze from Draco's figure, eyes brimming with water. Voldemort shouted an unintelligible spell and fire roared out of the nearby fireplace, travelling up the air and covering Draco's body from head to toe. His screamed grew louder and shriller and Narcissa clapped her hand over her face. 

"Look!" he growled at her, waving his free arm towards her, her hands clapping onto the table like magnets. She looked up towards him reluctantly and Petra could tell by the way she released sharp intermittent breaths through her mouth that she was trying not to make a sound.

She peered back up at him reluctantly, noticing that his clothes remained in tact. His flesh hadn't begun to burn and fall from his face, but he spun around, writhing in the flames, screaming. It seemed to go on forever until it suddenly came to a stop as Draco suddenly disappeared, taking the fire with him. As the scene melted around her, she heard the sound of Narcissa's voice, first demanding to know where Draco was and then screaming loudly herself. 

 

I offered Petra the towel when she pulled out her head, relieved she hadn't needed whatever contraption her necklace held. I had felt ridiculous. Of all of the things I could tell Petra, this particular memory wasn't even necessarily the worst by anyone else's standards, but there was more than that. The fire didn't cause any damage, but I had felt it's pain and see the flames surrounding my eyes. I genuinely thought, as a I floated and shook in the air, trying my best to pry my limbs from my side, that I was going to die. I'm not sure if I had ever had that feeling in all of it's surety before then.

She quickly understood that that was why I stood so still. I hadn't wanted to go in there. Like the other Slytherins, I wanted to leave and be out of the way for the battle, but Crabbe and Goyle had insisted we stay and await instruction. For once, I understood what it was like to be on the other end of their intimidation, and I went along with it. I had hoped that Potter would actually be anywhere but inside the castle, maybe on the front lines or venturing towards the rat bastard to have it out once and for all and when I saw his familiar hair bolting down the hall, my face fell.

The fire had caught everything around me and I froze wondering if someone had transported me back to that moment I floated, shaking over the table feeling the pain wreck through my body and waiting for the moment I would die or my body would give up. If he hadn't grabbed me, I would have stood there, just as I had in the abandoned house, and died from fire.

The last Auror assignment wasn't dangerous, or at the very least, it wasn't supposed to be. An abandoned building had drawn the attention of muggles with sounds that were distinctly magical to the trained ear. The Ministry expected it to be young wizards newly crossing the line of Underage Wizardry, giving their new freedoms a spin. But as my first foot crossed the threshold and the plank below my foot gave a loud, painful groan, the door slammed behind me, nearly taking me with it. I spun around instinctively towards it and something shoved my back like a rough and powerful wind. My face collided with the door and I tried to squirm away from the force all to no avail.

After a moment, it released and I slunk to the ground, turning around and sitting. It took me a moment to catch my breath as I gripped my wand, assuming this had been either a prank or some sort of anti-burglary charm, but a tiny ball of light on the dusty rug of the living room caught my attention. I walked closely toward it as it spread outwards. A small tuft of smoke rose from it and within two blinks it was suddenly a roaring wave of fire, rushing out towards all corners of the room. It rushed up toward me, licking my face with the flames. It didn't hurt, but it felt hot enough to steal my breath away. With another two blinks, the walls were covered in fire and, like my face, nothing began to decay but everything was covered in hot, flickering waves of fire. I broke out in a sweat, trying to take a deep breath in, but it felt impossible. The air wasn't smoky, but it was humid and thick and it got caught in my throat like a pill I couldn't swallow. In a moment, my mind was back in the Manor, shaking and in the abandoned house my knees gave way and I fell to the ground. 

Muffled sounds of laughing and running came to my ears. Some comments in light voices about how I was an Auror and someone called Ted was likely to be in really big trouble. More footsteps as the voices faded away, arguing amongst themselves. I lay on the dusty floor until morning.

Kids. Barely fresh out of Hogwarts and only just able to meet the requirements for Underage Magic. I had been bested by children and that was really the Ministry's final straw. Even after the high profile case failure that garnered so much media attention, they begrudgingly agreed to let me continue my work thanks to my own pleading that it had helped me, so long as I went out with a charm that changed my looks. This was what forced them to take me out of any Ministry work and force me to get therapy.

I watched the fiery thread float through the water as Petra stood, still drying her face off. It seemed so much further than it had before, sitting in the bowl, away from my body. Almost like I had rid myself of it. Maybe I lulled myself into some sort of state of false security, but something other than paralysing fear gripped my chest. It was a strength I didn't know that I had. I looked up at Petra after she finished dabbing her face.

"I think I'm ready, Petra."

"Ready?" she asked, still recovering from what she saw.

"I'm ready to go back. Really ready this time."


	11. Chapter 11

Not much had changed from the years, I noticed as I peered through the glass. The light from the windows reflected off of his weathered face. His hair looked stringy and nearly white now. Everyone had always commented on my father's young looks, but now he looked every bit as old as he was and then some. I silently thanked myself for what I was about to do. I had told Petra I was ready and I was. Looking at him now was almost like looking in some grotesque version of a mirror, one that showed you what would happen to you if you continued on your current path. But in that instant, I recognised the familiar voice that continued to not give myself enough credit. I worried so much about becoming my father, but I could never become him.

Even though the Wizengamot had acknowledged my parents supposed betrayal at the end of the war, the rest of society didn't. While my mother was left to social ostracism and, in truth I thought it actually suited her more introverted personality, my father couldn't cope properly and eventually ended up in a combination of St. Mungo's for Mental Maladies and a prison. Mostly, he endangered himself, but if you got on the wrong side of him, he didn't feel above endangering you. I got visitation rights and always had them, but I refused to use them - until today. 

"I'll be right behind the door if you need me," Petra said, grabbing my shoulder just before I went into the meeting cubicle. When I told her I was ready, I meant it. But it had taken a few weeks for me to gather the words, to rehearse, to realise what I wanted from the interaction, and to let go of the idea of cursing him out and leaving, despite the satisfaction it would provide.

His blue eyes looked white and vacant. They bore into me without the same strength they once had when I was little. Instead of cowering from the intensity, I found myself staring right back into eyes that didn't even look at me anymore, and instead looked past me. This was almost worst and a critical voice emerged. How could I do this to someone who was so clearly sick? Hadn't I had enough already? I squashed that voice. The man staring back at me, no matter what his mental or emotional state, had never given me enough. And that was precisely what I wanted to discuss.

I had written it down a thousand times, but saying it felt different.

"Father?" I said when I finally collected myself.

"Draco," he said in the same matter-of-fact, intimidating way he had always said it. I made a mental, sarcastic note that he hadn't lost his touch.

"I'm going to say some things to you that I've never said before. I want you to listen to what I have to say and not interrupt me. You'll have a chance to speak when I'm finished, but it's very important that you listen to me. Are you willing to do that?"

He sneered. "It's not as though I have much choice, do I? I'm stuck here during visitation hours."

I immediately wanted to argue about how he actually wasn't stuck and if he made enough noise, they would come and take him out, but I thought it detracted from the point.

"Is that a yes? You will listen to me and hear me out?"

He gave what I interpreted to be a single nod and I figured that was as far as I was going to get. This wasn't about him at any rate, it was about me. For once. Finally.

"I wanted to tell you that… you were viciously cruel to me all throughout my life. I can't recall a single time when you've ever attempted to comfort me or make me feel better. In fact, you always did the opposite. If I felt scared, you tried to terrify me more. If I felt sad, you mocked me. If I felt nervous or worried, you gave me more things to feel nervous or worried about. You spent most of my waking life either suffocating me with demands over what you thought I should do or ignoring me completely. And finally, you left me to deal with a murdering psychopath on my own. One who you knew was trying to kill me from the second you failed to complete his task."

My father visibly flinched, but averted his eyes. Up until that point, he had looked bored. Now his brows furrowed. I wanted to stop and run from what I knew would be the oncoming storm, but I stayed and continued.

"You'd explode at me and blow up at me for absolutely no reason and I never understood why. I felt terrified most of the time and when I wasn't terrified, I was busy trying to make other people feel as terrified as I was, albeit poorly. I was exhausted from working so hard for a tiny bit of approval from you that I never, ever got and it made me feel like I was inherently flawed, like there was something about me that wasn't good enough--"

"You weren't--" I knew what he said and I didn't let him finish.

"-- You said you wouldn't interrupt… I thought the way I was treated was my fault. And when you let that rat bastard loose on me without doing so much as to look scared for me, I felt like I was going to die. And it's affected everything, you know? Because I was too busy trying to do your legwork, I never made any worthwhile friends. I spent most of my childhood displacing my anger onto the one of the few people who'd turn out to want to save my skin. Imagine! My own father not making a peep at the thought of me being tortured by the Dark Lord, but Potter of all people didn't even want me to get burned by a spell that my own ignoramus of a friend let loose on him… but I'd spent the better half of my childhood hating someone who cared at least that much and shoving all of my time onto you. And now, it's affecting my career and my ability to be an Auror. Sometimes I go to sleep at night and all I see are that bastard's eyes…"

He sneered. He never liked me not referring to him as the Dark Lord. I wanted to make a rule that he had to at least not slouch in his chair, but I knew that asked too much. I reminded myself this wasn't for him.

"I want you to apologise," I continued, "for being such a inept father. I want you to admit what you've done to me all of these years. I want you to stop the mocking, the criticism, the name calling me and start treating me like the adult I am, at the very least, or... maybe when we've worked on our relationship, you can start treating me like a proper son."

I breathed out shakily, but I felt solid. Something changed about the air. For the longest time, my father and I exchanged looks that said all of the words that I wanted to say, but I had always shoved them down. I wanted to know why he was the way he was, mostly because I thought if I could find that out, if I could figure him out, I could try to win him over. I would know the secret to his acceptance and I'd know finally how to get him to love and care for me like he should. But that was the carrot on the edge of the stick he continued to dangle to hide from the fact that there was no secret. There was no code. There was no satisfying him and it felt an enormous relief to know that both he and I knew, and had to know at this point, that I was no longer trying.

Of course, that didn't keep him from what I knew was inevitable.

"Are you finished?" he asked after I'd folded my hands over each other.

"Yes," I said plainly.

"So I guess it's my turn now?" he said with sarcastic exuberance, "I get to speak?"

"Yes," I said, the ball in my throat starting to grow.

"Well, Draco. I'm about to tell you something that I've not said to you before. And this time you're going to have to be quiet and listen to what I've got to say since it's my turn now," he rose from his chair.

"I'm not going to let you verbally attack me any more," I said, looking him in the eye, "You can say what you'd like and I'm open to discussing this, but I will not allow you to hurt me any more."

"The truth is, Draco, that I tried. I tried to turn you into a decent son and a decent servant. But you constantly failed. And so I tried harder. That was what I was doing to you. Making you into a solider. But you were never, ever up to the task. You failed at almost everything but I kept trying and trying because I believed you could be something great. But you couldn't, could you? You couldn't complete a simple task. You couldn't do as you were told. And for that, you were punished. And you deserved every second of it--"

I stood up. "I told you that I would not tolerate you verbally attacking me anymore. I'm sorry that you feel that way, but I was a decent son. I was always a decent son. It was your responsibility to protect me and you didn't. And as for you trying to get me to be a servant, it sounds like the person you're talking about is not me, it's you."

He shouted something at the top of his lungs, but I missed it as I walked out of the room quickly. The alarms sounded, attracting the attention of some of the orderlies who I assumed were behind the door, restraining him, maybe for trying to reach over to my side of the table and breaking the glassy barrier cast between us. 

My emotions bounced all over the place like a group of released cornish pixies. In the place of the weight lifted off of my shoulders stood a slab of grief. I tried not to chastise myself for having false hope that something would change, that my father's eyes would brighten and tear, that some part of a recognisable human being would surface and he would not only apologise, but actually call me "son" instead of "Draco". 

Petra pat me on the back and I didn't stop my eyes from welling up. I expected this and even volunteered to confront my father when Petra had listened about how I was ready to move on. Confronting my mother had been another matter, but I knew it had to come next.

\--

My mother's hair fell over her face nearly like my father's did, only it was combed and pristine. I didn't mistake her willingness to be apart of this as compliance and understanding. My hand shook as I wrote the owl to her, telling her there was something serious we had to discuss. She hadn't heard from me in months. I knew she would be eager to talk to me and ask me how I had been. I could imagine the voice in her response owl, happy and bubbling with excitement at getting to have "brunch" with me. That must've explained the slight twinge of her lips, the awkwardness of her expression when she didn't arrive at a nice posh little hotel with a table full of tea, cakes, and other pastries, waiting to dote on me as usual. My mouth dried and I wished I had decided to do this in an owl instead. 

My father's storm was like a tornado, whereas my mother's storm was more like a hurricane. In some ways, confronting him was easy. At least he sat behind a barrier spell. While I didn't feel like my mother would ever intentionally hurt me, sometimes the words she could shoot were sharper than any blow.

"Thank you for coming, mother," I said, trying to keep my voice flat, formal. 

"Of course," my mother said, desperately trying to ignore the staunch atmosphere. Petra had lent me a space, since I didn't want to be back in the Manor and I certainly didn't want my mother in my apartment. The result was a cold office meeting that gave the impression we were colleagues, not relatives. The peach tones of the wall and the lighting made it feel warmer than it really was and contrasted heavily with the dark oak varnished table that separated us. My mother scratched her nails across the surface nervously.

"I need to tell you something that I've never told you before," I began, "And it's really important that you not interrupt me in the middle of it. You'll have the chance to say what you'd like after I'm finished, but it's important that I say my piece all at once. Would you agree to that?"

My mother nodded, forcing a smile. I could tell she wanted to interrupt and ask what this was all about. She would never be purposefully rude, I knew. So long as things remained relatively within social scripts and rules, I could expect her to behave. What I was about to do violated every script and code, though, and I steeled myself for what I knew would be the inevitable.

"Thank you," I paused. "First, I want you to know why I've been keeping my distance from you. It's honestly because I've felt very confused about everything that's happened and now that I've been able to get therapy, I've come to terms with a few things, which is why I've had to talk to you like this. I realise now that when I was little… all of those times that my father was horrible to me, I looked to you to protect me. I looked to you to try and watch out for me, and many, many times over… you didn't do anything."

I could see the redness growing in her pale cheeks. Normally, I'd stop and ask her if she was okay, offer to get her some tea, or do something I knew would calm her, but I had to stop doing that. For once, it was time for her to be more concerned about my emotional state than me about hers, so I continued.

"You let father hurt me, multiple times. I thought about running away with you. I even convinced Dobby to find a way to get us out of the Manor, but you would never leave. I gave up on that idea when I was really little, but I never knew why…. you stayed with him even when they sent him to Azkaban, even after those Death Eaters went into the house. Even after everyone continued to hurt me and even when I was recruited… you never did anything to--"

"How dare you?" she said softly but strongly, her eyes glossed over. Her hands were tensed and balled as I'd seen them multiple times on the Manor dining room during the times the rat bastard would detail his upcoming plans, especially as they involved me or my father.

"I'm sorry?" I said, taken aback. I should have told her she promised to not interrupt, but she threw me off. I'd never seen my mother very angry in my life, and for once she looked visibly frustrated.

"Maybe you aren't aware that I betrayed the Dark Lord for you. That I made the Unbreakable Vow for--"

"I am aware. And you promised me that you wouldn't interrupt. I'm not finished yet. You'll have time to say what you want to say," I said quickly, trying to get back on the horse.

My mother looked away and clinched her jaw. Social decorum, for what little it was worth, came out in my favour.

"I know about the Vow," I continued, "And I know about you asking Potter about me. But… that doesn't make up for the things that you did and what you didn't do. If you had protected me from the start, if you had left father when you saw him mistreat me… when you saw what he did and the way he ridiculed me, even when I was little, we would have never been in that position to begin with…" My thoughts began to trail into excuses. My father was terrifying. It certainly wouldn't become my mother to divorce such a prominent pureblood wizard and maybe their marriage had been arranged by their families years before she really had any say in it. I recounted all of this to Petra when we began discussing the confrontation and I felt my words echo hers as she interrupted my torrent of reasons why my mother consistently failed to protect me.

"Even if you didn't hurt me on purpose, even if you were having a hard time, I still need you to know that it did hurt me regardless."

My mother still avoided my eyes and I continued, "I felt terrified constantly. I was afraid of my father and I had no one to run to. Sometimes you would try to protect me, but sometimes you wouldn't even look at me. It felt like I didn't exist. I felt not worth protecting. You ignored everything that my father did which made me feel crazy for being so upset. What I've been through with that rat bastard… will probably haunt me for a long time. It's affected my Auror training, my relationships, my life. I might've had more friends growing up if you hadn't taught me that political allegiances were more important than relationships. I want you to acknowledge that, even if you didn't intend for it, you did help hurt me. I want you to apologise for not doing what you should have done, which was to take me out of that house and never come back. I want you to realise that I'm an adult now and that I'm your son - not your political confidante or another social connection. I want you to see me the way you used to see when me when I was little, before things began to change, when I was a baby. I remember a mother who played with me, who enjoyed being around me. And I want that mother back."

My voice cracked and I cleared my throat. "I'm sorry that this has caused such a rift between us. Father always came between us. I don't think he's capable of loving me. I don't think he's capable of loving anyone. I know that you care. I just need for you to understand how this all has affected me and acknowledge it. Because the silence, the hiding, the fake smiles and the social soirees… I just can't live like that anymore, Mom. Please?"

She looked at me finally, her eyes brimming with tears. Unlike what I hoped, she didn't look empathetic, sad, or distressed - just infuriated. She stood quickly, hand still bunched up on the table and her other hand holding her stomach, as if pressing against the impolite emotions that threatened to tumble out.

"How dare you?" she said again almost silently, "Of all the ungrateful…" She paced her breathing and I recognised the unfamiliar beat of someone who fought tooth and nail to keep themselves from expressing anything beyond the pale in public. Even though we were in a room, alone, together, my mother never dropped the act for a second. I sat there wondering if she would ever drop the act and if I had ever actually seen her drop the act. I knew having Petra there would make it impossible for her, but i never imagined even me in the room would still cause her to continue the rules of engagement.

"I took the Unbreakable Vow for you," she said stiffly, "I betrayed The Dark Lord. I offered myself to be tortured and killed on multiple occasions instead of you."

I desperately wanted to scream. Snape took the Unbreakable Vow. It was he who protected me more than my actual mother did. And she did betray that rat bastard, when she was sure he wouldn't figure it out. And she offered herself many times, but usually when he had a penchant for me in particular and when no replacements would do. It was not enough and I knew it. Why had we been in that situation from the beginning? She stayed with my father. She saw who he aligned with. That voice argued. I was being unnecessarily harsh on my mother, but hadn't she been harsh on me for the last few years? And if indeed she didn't have control over anything, why not at the very least acknowledge that it still hurt me, despite her best efforts?

"My husband is locked away in s-some… mental asylum and you bring me here to chastise me? After I've lost nearly everything? Almost all of my friends who now see me as a traitor?"

But you were a traitor. You worked for him. You hid him. And you were only lucky that the Wizengamot took pity on you and your situation. I wanted to remind her of Charity Burbage's body and how she disposed of it.

"You've got a lot of nerve, inviting me to this incredibly depressing place and interrogating me like I'm some sort of criminal. I'm most certainly not a criminal, Draco. I'm your mother. And it's incredibly disrespectful for you to accuse me of… of…"

She could barely say it. Child abuse. At the very least, an accomplice in child abuse. Attempted murder at times. She knew what powers the rat bastard had and what extents he would go to use them. Why make the Unbreakable Vow if I was really safe all along? I said nothing. She had a chance to say her piece. But for once in my life, I didn't hold back my tears any more. I was done pretending to be fantastic for her sake and I was done letting her pretend like what she did wasn't hurting. 

She looked at me briefly, at the water running down my face. Even if I didn't have a mirror, I knew that I didn't look disgusted or angry, just sad. Maybe the reason I knew talking to my mother would be so difficult was because I had more hope for her. My father never appeared human, but on rare occasions, I thought I saw my mother's real face. This wasn't one of those times.

"I have business to attend to," she said, holding her head up high. She reached in her pocket and tossed a cloth handkerchief towards me, "You should clean yourself up before you leave."

She marched towards the door quickly. I didn't bother interrupting or talking. Logically I had expected this, but my chest felt frozen and my mind stuck. She stopped just short of shutting the door and breathed out slowly.

"If this is truly how you feel about your own family, Draco, and if you are so unwilling to provide your own mother support… perhaps it's time I stopped providing you with any support." She closed the door behind her.


	12. Chapter 12

"Potter" 

I scratched that out with my quill, ripping off the start of the sheet and starting afresh.

"Dear Harry"

I scratched it again. Dropping the quill then and sighing. That was far too familiar for someone I had on many occasions, attempted to kill or at least severely injure. Or frighten. Or annoy.

"Surely it can't be that hard?" Blaise said from across the room. I could hear the edge in his voice. As wonderful of a friend Blaise had been to let me stay with him since my mother blocked me from every account even remotely related to my name and every last economic resource I had, I knew he had become accustomed to living alone. He enjoyed the bachelor's life, working late when his job required and returning home to a pristine apartment. Apparently the Zambinis didn't own a single house elf and felt the entire practice of owning house elves repugnant, so Blaise had grown up learning to properly clean everything with the right spells. Not only did I not know a single cleaning spell, but my spoiled upbringing meant I was an unusually messy houseguest.

"You think writing Potter is easy?" I said.

"Sure," Blaise said, attempting to return to a thick, long roll of parchment he'd brought home with him, "Teenagers do it all of the time, after all."

I rolled my eyes. "This is hardly a fan letter, and you know it."

"Shouldn't you do this in person?" Blaise asked.

"Oh no," I said shivering, "I can barely write this letter. Imagine me bumbling about in person."

"You're going to have to face Potter one of these days, you know," Blaise said.

"I'd imagine, yes. I will have to. But hopefully, with this letter, we'll actually be able to at least look each other in the eye, instead of him shooting daggers in my direction."

"And you shooting daggers in his?"

"Right," I said, sighing, tanned parchment staring back up at me. The truth was, I'd seen Potter many times since the last time he saw me. We had exchanged a menacing glare in the Ministry after I'd accepted my position in the Auror team, and I never saw him again in the Ministry after that. Rumour had it at that he changed his regular coffee break so as to insure he wouldn't happen upon me again in the hall, but that could just be yet another thing my colleagues told me to break my spirit and encourage me to quit. These were the same people who attempted to convince me during a drill exercise that it was my turn to curse the Minister, and ensured me the Ministry took every precaution to deflect the curse. So, who's to say.

But since that day, every time I even so much as spotted someone with ruffled black hair and glasses, I disappeared into the nearest cupboard, alleyway, shop, train compartment or whatever. I couldn't be sure if Potter ever caught wind to the fact I'd made every effort to avoid him, but either way, facing him square on after so many years felt impossible. I wasn't even sure I wouldn't just dodge him out of habit, even if I intended on confronting him.

"Dear Potter," I wrote, hoping that balanced out the formal with the informal:

"I'm writing you this owl in an attempt to make amends for my past with the understanding that my behaviour towards you may have been so severe that there is nothing I can do to make amends for it. Since the day we met, or perhaps shortly thereafter, I've been exceptionally cruel to you. Though I didn't match you physically by far on many occasions, I saw fit to ensure that your life was never easy or without some form of annoyance. In many situations, if I didn't harm you myself, I put you in situations where I knew harm would befall you. Despite many of your attempts to save my life, I continued to hold contempt for you.

Growing up, my life has not been very easy and there were many situations where I was either encouraged or forced to make life as difficult for you. I say this not in attempt to excuse what I did, but to make you understand that for very little of my life did I actually hold much resentment or hatred of you as a person. In truth, I admired you as many other people our age did, because of the stories about you. When I met you, I had tried my best to befriend you and looked forward to moments we would share together, but obviously my social skills and my passed down backward politics destroyed any friendship we could have cultivated. I didn't understand this, so it frustrated me. And, as you may not be surprised to realise, many people in my family were obsessed with you and trying to win you over through me, and, in truth, I was jealous of you.

Again, I say this to not excuse what I did. The abuse I perpetuated on you and your friends, especially your ~~mug~~ friend Granger, was unacceptable. I hope you will accept my sincerest apologies for my behaviour. 

I can understand if we are not a point yet where you have any desire to communicate with me, and in honesty, in the past few years I've avoided you at all costs. At this point, I feel as though avoiding you sends the message that I don't wish to take any responsibility for my actions, which is not the truth. Please let me know if there is any specific way I can make you feel more comfortable about this situation. Until notified of that, I'll simply go about my usual business and perhaps, one day, we shall cross paths.

I hold no expectation of conciliatory behaviour or open acknowledgement of my apology on your part, if we do see each other. Instead, I merely hope we can greet each other as old acquaintances often do, with a simple nod. Again, my sincerest apologies for my actions and I wish nothing but contentment for you, your family, and your friends.

Sincerely,

Draco Malfoy"

I sealed the letter, melting some wax for the stamp. I watched the wax turn from glossy to opaque as the seal dried. The Zambini family crest. In secret, I was glad that Blaise had let me use his seal, his owl, and his everything other than his name. I thought for sure that if Potter received a letter with the Malfoy family seal on it, he'd throw it straight into the fire.

My hands folded over the envelope, looking older than I remembered. Without thinking much of it, I examined my fingernails closely, pushing them against the pads of my thumbs and testing them out. Normally, under the same amount of pressure, they used to bend, sometimes crack. My mother often commented on the weakness of my nails, almost suggesting it were a weakness of character, sometimes asking her manicurist to clip mine. Since I hadn't been around her, nor had the spare funds to waste on things like manicures, they had grown significantly, but also differently. For once, they were strong.

I was never one to have a nail biting habit, and in fact prided myself on how little I bit my nails, but that didn't seem to matter. They always snapped, crack, and broke. Perhaps I never spent a second biting my nails, but I did manage to keep them close to my mouth, usually chewing my fingers in nervous anticipation.

The next week I would begin back at my work at the Ministry. Petra continued to advocate for me fiercely, and after over half a year in therapy, both she and I felt I could return to work. I even began to feel antsy cramped inside Blaise's flat. I wanted to get out there and start making my own living, especially since I had never done it for myself before. I expected a rush of emotion when I first re-entered the doors of the Ministry, but certainly not the rush of a strange mixture of sorrow and happiness the filled my chest as I looked at my hands.

It was small. My nails and how firm they felt under my thumbs. Why on earth did that make cry? I suppose it wasn't just my nails. It was my entire life and how that feeling of pressure on my thumb, solid and unyielding, represented everything. For the first time in my life, my nails were strong because I hadn't continued the anxious chewing because, unlike the entirety of my existence priorate to therapy, I finally felt safe. And I knew this was the feeling that I saw so many times played across the faces of others when they saw their loved ones, when other kids at Hogwarts smiled at the thought of returning home for the holidays, when parents said goodbye to their children at the train stations I would watch for a few minutes after my own allowed a nanny or other servant to drop me off. Decades I had missed out on this feeling that now seemed so basic and necessary to sustain anything close to a heartbeat, a feeling I had always chastised myself for wanting or needing. Almost everyone had this and even though I now finally had it as well, I mourned for the time that I hadn't had this. 

"I'm sure he'll forgive you, Draco," Blaise said, grasping my shoulder tightly. Like myself, Blaise wasn't very used to sweeping anyone up in a hug or wiping away their tears. Still, his small gesture comforted me in a way I wished but now knew how to comfort myself. I didn't have the heart to explain the real reason I had begun crying, and instead of shoving myself to my feet and wiping up my tears, I composed myself and waited until I felt ready to stand.

Clearing my throat, I held the envelope out in my hands. "I suppose then it's time I sent this off," I said aloud, mostly to myself.

"Shit!" Blaise said, hitting himself in the head with his palm, "I completely forgot. My owl's taking a package to my mum in Romania."

"Romania?"

"Yeah," Blaise dismissed with a hand, "This one's actually lasting, thankfully. But we'll see how things get along. Mum's real excited about it though. Begged me to send some darling baby photos." Blaise grimaced.

"Do you have any other owls?" Now that I'd finally gathered the courage to write the damn thing, I didn't want to give myself another second to regret it or find some imperfection in the way the envelope folded.

"No," Blaise said, "But… next door they might. Some girl lives there, just below our school year, I think. She's got quite a few. Maybe she'd let you borrow one? Potter can't live far off."

"I suppose you're right," I said, tucking the envelope into my jacket, "I'll go ask."

"Sorry, mate," Blaise said, rubbing his head. Looking at the unnaturally tidy state of his briefcase and all the papers he'd dug through in the last hour, I couldn't find much anger towards him.

"Don't worry about it," I said, smiling, "I'm sure they've got something."

I stepped out into the carpeted hallway, greeted immediately by the green door opposite of Blaise's. Placing my hand firmly against my side, scared the envelope would destroy itself somehow, I knocked tentatively on the wooden door, hearing an immediate shuffle and a light voice calling, "Augh! J… J-just a minute please!"

I heard a few more clunks and bumps before the door ripped open, revealing a familiar looking woman exactly my height with dark auburn hair. For a minute, I stared, forgetting the envelope in my jacket.

"Well…" the woman said, tilting her head at me. Paint decorated part of her face accidentally, as well as the rest of her clothes when I looked down. Before I allowed myself any more rudeness, I managed to sputter, "Apologies. I… I-I was wondering if you had an… owl I could spare?"

I took out the envelope and her gaze softened. "Oh, yes. Certainly. Why don't you come in? Terribly sorry about the paint everywhere but the creative process… well, you know."

She walked back through the door leaving it wide open for me and disappearing down a hall before I managed to get myself through the door frame. It felt strange to just walk into someone else's flat, especially one so comically opposite of the one I had come from. Paintbrushes, buckets, canvasses, and all manners of paper lay about over tables, chairs, desks, and even kitchen cabinets. This felt beyond just a simple creative process… unless this woman was creating an entire gallery show in a day.

"Here we are," she said, bringing a small happily tooting owl out of the back hall, and snapping the letter out of my hand.

"I-It's going to--"

"Harry Potter, I see!" she grinned when she read the front of it. "A fan letter? Or perhaps a Howler?"

"Oh no," I said, blush raising to my cheeks, "None of that really. He's… an old friend. I'm… just sending some expected correspondence." I lied. But the last thing I wanted to tell this new and very pretty woman was how I had spent the last six months in therapy and was now apologising to *the* Harry Potter for repeated, failed attempts at being his archenemy. "Thank you," I stumbled, as she let the owl go out side of a window she had to lean on an easel to reach. "Blaise has only one owl and it's off delivering a package to his mum in Romania."

"Hah," she said grinning, wiping her hands on a pair of what looked like a combination between a giant blue bib and a pair of pants I couldn't stop gawking at. Aside from the fact that it fit her particularly well, I was quite sure I'd never seen a wizard in a garment like that. Or maybe I had, but blocked it out of my memory somehow.

"Overalls," she said loudly and I jumped, "Not your typical robe but it's a lot better to paint in." She laughed to herself when I jumped and when my eyes travelled back up to her face, hers squared on mine knowingly. I blushed again and turned away.

"I'm dreadfully sorry for my rudeness," I said, flummoxing my way towards the door, knocking over a few papers, "And sorry about that as well--"

"Would you like to stay?" she said, just as I reached the door frame, "Or go out? Or, just you know? Have a drink or something?"

Well, this was a dramatic turn of affairs. I legitimately lost both my tongue and my nerve. Luckily, that didn't seem to deter her.

"What's your name?" she said smiling after a moment, almost conceding that she had to start with a far less terrifying question.

"Draco," I said, "Draco Malfoy." I extended a practiced hand towards her, letting my shoulders fall. "And yours?" I said.

"Astoria Greengrass," she said. 

 

The End


End file.
